


Sanctuary Eternal

by LadyJanus



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: s04e13 Sanctuary for None: part 2, F/F, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-21 12:38:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 25,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13741041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyJanus/pseuds/LadyJanus
Summary: As the auto destruct counted down inevitably, Helen struggled to put on Henry's full outer-shell shield jacket. But with only six seconds left in the countdown, she knew she didn't have time for the power cells to charge up the personal force shield to protect her body against the explosion that would bring her Sanctuary down on her head.All this raced through her mind in the space of a second."Bloody hell,"she whispered, bowing to the inevitable fact that this was one death she wasn't going to be able to cheat."You called," a mocking voice said from behind her as the first rumblings of destruction began.





	1. Prologue - December 30, 2011

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RadioStarERB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RadioStarERB/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I own nothing in this Sanctuary story but a bit of post-series plotting with a few of my favourite characters and some original characters. Sanctuary belongs to Damian Kindler, Amanda Tapping, Martin Wood, The Beedie Group, Tricon Films & Television, Space and whoever else owns bits and pieces of it.
> 
> Spoilers: Up to the episode "Sanctuary for None - Part 2" (Season 4, Episode 13). Everything after that is up for grabs. LOL!!!
> 
> For RadioStarERB, who wished for more post-"Sanctuary for None" fanfiction! I wish they'd had fifth season or TV movie as well! Enjoy!

As the auto destruct counted down inevitably, Helen struggled to put on Henry’s full outer-shell shield jacket. But with only six seconds left in the countdown, she knew she didn’t have time for the power cells to charge up the personal force shield to protect her body against the explosion that would bring her Sanctuary down on her head.

 

All this raced through her mind in the space of a second.

 

 _“Bloody hell,”_ she whispered, bowing to the inevitable fact that this was one death she wasn’t going to be able to cheat.

 

“You called,” a mocking voice said from behind her as the first rumblings of destruction began.

 

“Oh, thank God,” Helen breathed in relief, clinging to that warm body.

 

And as she felt herself dissolve into the ether, she heard that loving voice say, _“Oh come on, you know I could never let you die any more than you could let me die.”_

 

#


	2. Chapter 1 - March 27, 2012

_“Shall we begin?”_

 

 _Of course, she would begin this new chapter of my life in the_ exact _same way she began the last chapter_ , Dr. Will Zimmerman thought ruefully as he followed his near-immortal boss, Dr. Helen Magnus, into the new Sanctuary, marveling at the technological wonder stretched out before him. Yet for all the evident sophistication in its construction kilometres below the desert floor in the outback west of Coober Pedy, South Australia, he knew that those two buildings could not be the entirety of this new facility. He realised immediately that there had to be more beyond what he could see.

 

Since her cryptic communication to him that had commandeered the Special Counter-Insurgency Unit’s network from underneath Director Greg Addison’s nose, _without_ anyone being the wiser, he and his girlfriend, Abby Corrigan, had worked non-stop to figure out what hidey-hole she’d disappeared into. Of course, Magnus being Magnus, she couldn’t just send him a straightforward message.

 

_“Sanctuary for All.”_

 

Those three words and a picture of the situation room taken while he and Abby had tried to trace Helen’s footsteps from London in 1898—when she’d followed a madman back through time in order to preserve the timeline, and had had to live through more than a century, staying out of _History’s_ way and, not to mention, her younger self’s way—were the only clues she’d given him.

 

_Sanctuary for all those Abnormal beings and creatures she’d dedicated the better part of 250 years to protecting and, in many cases, preserving from extinction._

 

But those clues had been enough for him to understand that he had all the information necessary to finding her, once he’d sat back and considered what he and Abby had learned from that exercise. Under the alias of Helen Bancroft—and probably a score of other false identities—this second Helen Magnus had subtly contacted visionary scientists such as Albert Einstein and Buckminister Fuller. With her knowledge of the future, she’d also amassed a vast fortune—in addition to the one her _original self_ had made going through the 20 th century for the first time—which she’d used to set up uncounted businesses and shell companies on different continents.

 

Will shook his head as another futuristic transport sphere rocketed through the complex, on its way to only God knew where; even now, thinking about _two_ Helen Magnus living through those same 113 years, from 1898 to 2011, gave him a headache. The younger Helen lived through all those years for the first time, but never lost her awe for life in all its myriad forms as the world evolved and blossomed before her. Meanwhile, the older Helen had lived through the same century a second time, watching from the shadows as the same mistakes were made throughout the world ... allowing her younger self to make all those painful mistakes ... and not interfering, because to do so might destroy the future and even the world.

 

However, that this new Sanctuary existed meant that the older Helen had obviously not hidden herself away in a mountain-top monastery and twiddled her thumbs for a century, but had worked very carefully behind the scenes to create this facility and everything that went into supporting it, _without_ her younger counterpart getting wind of it. Then she’d had to rejoin the timeline six months ago, just after her younger self had gone back in time.

 

It was all so mindboggling, which was saying something, because when Will had first agreed to work for her … _God, was it less than four years ago_ (or 110 years ago from her perspective), he’d thought that coming to work for a 157-year old woman, who looked like she couldn’t be more than 35 to 40 years old at the outside—not to mention all the creatures and beings she protected—was mindboggling.

 

Again, he had to admire her ability to continually _surprise_ him; this was definitely _not_ something he’d seen coming. In fact, at first, he’d fallen for her _‘century secluded on a mountain-top’_ story hook, line and sinker! That comforting illusion hadn’t lasted long though.

 

However, the more he and Abby had thought about it and discussed it since the destruction of Helen’s previous headquarters, the Old City Sanctury, they’d realised that she’d known—not simply predicted—but _known_ that tolerance of Abnormals was not something that would happen any time soon and that she would need something more secure than the Global Sanctuary Network her younger self had created.

 

Therefore, over those last few months before blowing up her _home_ , Helen had— _somehow_ —without his knowledge, closed most of her Sanctuaries around the world and liquidated her assets. The United Nations and the world governments—which her younger self co-operated with throughout the 20th century—had turned on her and the Abnormal community in response to a manufactured crisis set in motion as a distraction by Adam Worth, when he’d used advanced technology from the underground city of Praxis to go back in time.

 

But Addison and SCIU were only symptoms of a wider disease; Will recognised that now. It was the disease of a world that _could not_ accept Abnormals and _would not_ any time soon ... a world prepared to commit genocide and other atrocities to cleanse the planet of these extraordinary beings or, at the very least, control and exploit them.

 

The question, which Will realised he’d left unanswered in the chaos of the aftermath following the destruction of the Old City Sanctuary, was _what_ Helen had done with all those Abnormals who would have been displaced when she closed her facilities.

 

 _Sanctuary for All_ : it was her not only her mandate ... it was her _Creed_.

 

Helen would never have abandoned them to a world that saw them as freaks and monsters to be hunted down and imprisoned or slaughtered. No, a _273-year-old Magnus_ knew how to fly under the radar of governments and secret organisations in ways that the already formidable _160-year-old Dr. Magnus_ , who had followed Adam Worth back in time, would not.

 

With that in mind, as he retraced her alias _Helen Bancroft_ through the 20 th century, Will had realised that she had not only gone to ground—she had literally gone _underground_. From there the clues had presented themselves; she would want one central place, somewhere no one would think to look, but relatively accessible to her and those she trusted.

 

Her purchase of a simple general store had led him to speculate that she probably had some sort of opal mining interest in Coober Pedy, although he couldn’t prove it. But this locale had been among the last to suggest itself, which was strange to him now, considering how much she seemed to have been inspired by the technology of the now-destroyed Praxis—the ancient and extraordinary Hollow Earth city located so far beneath the surface, it was possible to access the planet’s mantle layer from there.

 

However, the sparsely populated outback of South Australia would have offered her the isolation and privacy necessary to build this place, and with her future knowledge of Praxis, if she’d started working on it early enough in the 20th century, she may have even been able to make it virtually invisible from the _Australian_ _government_ itself.

 

Following her now into the low, sprawling building, the sense of peace and solitude he’d experienced as they walked across the courtyard in the artificial morning light was shattered by the noise of myriad languages and the crush of a couple hundred beings milling around. Will recognised that the roiling mass of bodies was largely made up of different Hollow Earth species of Abnormals, displaced when Praxis and many of its associated underground enclaves were destroyed.

 

One loud voice cut through the din as Magnus ploughed through the crowd like a battleship through the waves, with Will following in her wake. His face lit up in a grin as they came upon Kate Freelander squaring off against one of the large, bipedal Hollow Earth reptilians.

 

“I don’t have _time_ for this crap!” she growled furiously. “You came all the way _here_ to complain about _that?_ ”

 

 _Talk about your David versus Goliath_ , he thought humorously; the Abnormal probably outweighed her by a good _thousand_ pounds, but _it_ was the one backing away from the short, slightly built, Indian woman.

 

“I don’t _care_ if your delicate nose can’t take the smell of Langorn BO, Steve’s habitat is the only one that maintains a high enough concentration of hydrogen sulfide so your _sorry-assed_ body doesn’t start feeding on your own _damned_ muscle mass the way it did while you were on the surface!” she yelled at the reptilian. “You’re just lucky he agreed to share his space with you, _buddy_ , so get your sorry _ass_ back to his quarters and breathe your rotten eggs gas for at least the next forty-eight hours before you set _foot_ out of there again—understood?”

 

She glared at the Abnormal pressed up against the wall. _“Understood?”_ she repeated in a low growl.

 

“Understood,” it acknowledged in defeat, shoulders literally slumping before the small woman.

 

“Good,” she said more quietly now. “Your surviving Ladorgorn buddies from the other calderas should start arriving in the next two weeks and your community will be ready by the time they get here. Then you will _kindly_ thank Steve for allowing you to share his habitat before you move in with them. Is that clear?”

 

“Yesss,” it hissed resentfully, before turning and shambling away.

 

Will chuckled, sharing an amused look with Magnus. “Only you, Kate, could intimidate a giant talking lizard ten times your weight,” he said and she turned to him in surprise.

 

“Will!” she shouted, hurrying over to give him a tight hug. “When did you get here?”

 

“About fifteen minutes ago,” he replied as they moved apart. “You?”

 

“Last week,” she said with a happy grin. “When I got back to Hollow Earth with my group of Abnormals from Old City, the Doc’s people were already there with Garris coordinating the evacuation of all those in our section who wanted to come here. I came to help these groups get settled. Have you _seen_ this place?” she asked excitedly.

 

“Only what was visible on the walk over here from the Coober Pedy tunnel,” he answered.

 

“Dude, it’s completely _crazy_! Wait till you see the rest of it!” she babbled enthusiastically. “It’ll blow your mind more than even _Praxis_ did!”

 

Will gaped at her and then turned to look at a smirking Magnus. She shrugged and gave a soft chuckle.

 

“I had a century to kill and I was never patient enough for prolonged meditation,” she quipped. “After a month in the monastery in Nepal, I got bored.”

 

“And this place has space for all the Abnormals from the other Sanctuaries?”

 

“A _century_ , William,” she reminded him again, eyes twinkling merrily as he tried to rein in his disbelief. “Oh, and this is only the entry hall.”

 

Again, his mouth dropped in utter mind-boggling confusion and disbelief at this statement. _“The entry hall? All this is only the entry hall?”_

 

She chuckled, Kate’s giggles joining her, and he had to fight to _not_ get angry with them.

 

“Well you don’t think that she could house all the world’s Abnormals here, do you?” Kate asked impudently.

 

“Our opal mining operations in Coober Pedy and the surrounding areas provide great cover for our activites here,” Helen explained as she entered a code into the wall panel and submitted to a retinal scan. A door morphed out of the wall, opening to show the entrance to a Praxian transport sphere. “And none of my above-ground staff or those working the mine have ever been associated with Helen Magnus and the Sanctuary Network.”

 

“I take it that this sphere will transport us to the main Sanctuary?” he said drily, trying to wrap his brain around all the new information.

 

“You can say that,” she said mysteriously.

 

“What about all the old Sanctuaries’ staff—are they at the new Sanctuary?” he asked.

 

“Many are,” she replied. “However, some—mostly normal Human staff and those whose abnormalities are not readily obvious—have opted to stay on the surface and run a number of small safehouses that will provide havens for newly emerged or newly discovered Abnormals until they can be moved here, while others have decided to blend back into society, but will offer help and support when we need it.”

 

“Wow,” he said softly.

 

She chuckled again. “Kate, once Declan finishes settling the last of his charges in the Sanctuary, he’s all yours to fine-tune the habitats’ security for your residents.”

 

“Thanks Doc,” the younger woman replied. “I need to get the last of this group organised in their temporary quarters before this afternoon’s batch gets here.”

 

“Come along, Will, we have much to discuss,” Magnus said as she headed into the transport sphere. He gave Kate another quick hug and hurried to catch up. Unlike the Praxian device on which it was based, this sphere was equipped with seats and what looked like a large round window on the ‘front wall’ in addition to the small window on the door.

 

“Wow,” he said as he sat down, “this is certainly more comfortable than the Praxian ones … but I didn’t notice a window on the other spheres I saw on the way here.”

 

“That’s because there isn’t one,” Helen replied smiling as recessed controls unfolded from the bottom of the display. “It’s a holographic inlay tied to the sphere’s sensors. It also acts as a communications console.”

 

“Wow,” he repeated.

 

There was barely a sense of forward movement as the sphere began its journey, but he sat spellbound as the “entry hall” whizzed past and they entered a dark tunnel, chatting amicably. After about five minutes, she directed his attention again to the holographic display, as it changed from the view of the tunnel to a dark, underwater view.

 

Chuckling, she said in the bright tones of a tour guide, “We are now leaving the continent of Australia.”

 

#


	3. Chapter 2

_“We’re leaving Australia,”_ he repeated distractedly as the sphere dove to the bottom of the ocean. “Holy crap! We—we’re under water!”

 

“Well, leaving Australia does rather mean being eventually _dropped in the drink_ —so to speak—no matter in which direction you go,” she teased, blue eyes flashing with good humor as her fingers danced over the controls with an ease that spoke of long experience. “We’ll only be in the water for a few minutes,” she said as they rapidly traversed the ocean floor.

 

“Where are the rails?”

 

She laughed again. “There are none—it is now a submersible … one that is quite well stealthed, if I do say so myself. Building a rail system at the bottom of the ocean—not to mention, through some rather active subduction zones—is not really practical.”

 

“Then why build the _“entry hall”_ at all in Australia if you’re just going to have to move everything underwater to wherever the new Sanctuary is?” he asked in confusion.

 

“It was rather convenient actually,” she replied with her trademark grin, which he’d learned she could use to hide a multitude of sins, and he wondered idly what she was hiding now. “At one time, I thought that perhaps the Coober Pedy mine could be the safe haven I needed, but even as sparsely populated as the area is, a large operation such as this would not have gone unnoticed for long, even under cover of the mining operation. Where we are going is a little more … isolated.”

 

“Where? Antarctica?” he joked. She chuckled and after a long moment of silence, he felt his heart skip a beat. “Oh … please don’t tell me you’ve relocated us to _Antarctica_?” he said in consternation. “Magnus?” he moaned, as she remained silent, smiling that infuriating _Mona Lisa_ smile. _“Magnus?”_

 

She laughed after a few moments—loudly and heartily. “We are _not_ going to Antarctica, Will,” she relented, eyes twinkling merrily as he breathed a sigh of relief. “Although, it is a near thing.”

 

“And what the hell does _that_ mean?”

 

“Well, since I built my first Sanctuary in London, I thought it only fitting that I build what I intend to be my last Sanctuary, on the opposite side of the world—or as close to it as I could get.”

 

Will looked at her with definite puzzlement, trying to work through her riddle. Suddenly, he was startled by the dark aperture of an iris diaphragm spiralling open, into which the sphere plunged.

 

“Welcome to the Antipodes Islands,” she said as the water-filled room drained and another aperture opened. The sphere rocketed into the tunnel to continue its fantastic journey. “Of course, they’re not at the exact antipode to London, but it’s close enough.”

 

 _“Okaaay,”_ he said slowly, not quite sure what to say to that.

 

She laughed. “You sound exactly like Declan when I first told him.”

 

“I can just imagine,” he muttered and she laughed again.

 

“It was isolated,” she explained as the sphere entered and stopped what was obviously a station after careening through a couple of turns. “The Antipodes are sub-Antarctic islands—there is little up top of note but birds and flowers. It was within reach of the Coober Pedy facility, as well as more convenient for my ships, which I’ve gone to great pains to make untraceable.”

 

As the door opened, she rose and exited the sphere, smiling as she looked back at him. “Welcome to Sanctuary City,” Helen said as he stared at the vista that opened before him.

 

 _“Sanctuary City?”_ he croaked in disbelief.

 

“Like I said, I had _a lot_ of time on my hands,” she quipped and Will could only nod, dumbfounded.

 

“So, if Declan is here, Henry must be as well,” he said at last as he followed her out of the sphere, over the docking threshold into a glass-walled atrium and up a spiral staircase that seemed to float up to the next floor.

 

The view of the city through the glass wall was breathtaking. Light and airy, with a few tall spires beneath the dome of an artificial sky, it reminded Will of a glittering futuristic city on another planet. Helen grinned as she waited patiently at the top of the stairs for him to collect his jaw off the ground and continue his journey up to her.

 

“Yes, they arrived two weeks ago,” she said continuing their conversation as they walked down the hall, “just in time to meet the ship carrying the London residents. Erika came ahead last month. She and Henry are all settled in now and he is already up to his elbows in my computer and security systems.”

 

Will laughed. “Of course, he is. But why did he and Declan give me the run-around for over a month?” he asked in confusion.

 

“Sorry about that,” she apologised. “But they were acting on my orders—I couldn’t afford to have any communications over unsecured lines and I had every confidence you’d figure out how to get to Coober Pedy. After the destruction of the Old City Sanctuary, given SCIU’s attempt to commit genocide against the Hollow Earth Abnormals, I knew I had to finish getting the London and New York City sanctuaries evacuated and the residents shipped here before Addison or the UN Security Council realised that anything was happening,” she said as she led him into her spacious office overlooking the pastoral gardens and lawn below. “I needed Declan and Henry to make it seem like it was still business as usual in the London Sanctuary, while Nikola, Dr. Khalian and Diana Simpson did the same in New York.”

 

“And since their attempt at building a Homeland District in Old City came close a disaster of mushroom cloud proportions, you knew that the remaining Hollow Earth Abnormals would agree to go back underground with Kate where you could arrange to transport them here, away from prying eyes,” he said following her train of thought.

 

“Exactly,” she replied smiling as they settled into comfortable armchairs in the office’s lounge area, where the low coffee table was set with an antique tea service, a carafe of coffee and a selection of breakfast foods. “Help yourself, I know you’re hungry,” she said pouring herself a cup of tea. “It is now 8:00 AM local time; my people who run the inn where you were staying alerted me when you snuck into the store this morning in order to access the tunnel.”

 

Will’s stomach rumbled in response and he laughed as he poured himself a large mug of coffee and helped himself to eggs, bacon, toast and fruit.

 

“Thanks,” he said after swallowing his first bite. “I figured you probably had people watching me, but I couldn’t tell for sure—they were very good.”

 

“That is why I employ them,” she quipped over the rim of her teacup. “What of Abby?” she asked, her humour banked now by the concern in her blue eyes. “Will she be joining you?”

 

He chuckled. “After I quit last week, we had a very _public_ break-up.” He took a deep breath. “She helped me when I first got that message from you, but once I started to search for where the new Sanctuary could be, she decided that she shouldn’t know—in case Addison tried to get it out of her—and that she should keep working for SCIU. But she does want to come, Magnus.” Will raked his hand through his hair as frustration and anger burned through him. “What the SCIU nearly did to the Abnormals in the Homeland District really shook her—shook both of us. But she _never_ believed that our own government would condone genocide ... that the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States of America or the UN Security Council would _issue and sign_ directives to troops to support Addison’s and Villanova’s activities. Addison’s personal assistant and military attaché, Lieutenant Victor Hilson, stole the orders and left copies in their place.”

 

Magnus stared at him in shock as he continued. “I have the originals with me, and both Hilson and Abby have copies as insurance, but we should get them out of there as soon as possible. Once Addison finds out that the original documents are gone, he’ll know that Hilson took them—the lieutenant is the only other person at SCIU who knows they even exist.

 

“He’s a type of projective empath, Magnus, but like nothing I’ve ever read in your files on empaths and telepaths. Unlike some empaths who can project their feelings on another person, influencing their minds, Victor can project what he wants on an _object_ —literally making it into something else.”

 

 _“What?”_ she asked—simultaneously confused and intrigued. “Wait a minute—couldn’t he simply be influencing your mind to think you’re seeing what he wants you to see?”

 

Will laughed. “I thought of that as well, but then he took a plain beer bottle and turned it into a porcelain Hummel figurine, and it was still a figurine after he left. However, when Abby came home two days later, while Victor was in Washington D.C. with Addison, _she_ saw a Hummel figurine and so did everyone else. That’s why Addison still thinks he has the original orders in his safe. Victor took photocopies and changed them so that they were indistinguishable from the real thing, complete with all the watermarks and security features. The figurine turned back into a bottle after about nine days, but according to Victor, the closer the thing he’s changing is to the orginal, the stronger the illusion is and the longer it will last; that’s why he used photocopies. Anyway, he thinks that the documents should last about a month before the illusion breaks. But it’s already been eighteen days since he made the switch.

 

“Until now he’s never had anywhere to go and has never known who to trust,” Will said quietly. “He’s been hiding his abilities all his life and doesn’t want to anymore. Now that he knows we exist, he wants come. He’s never really had a family and joined the military right out of high school in order to further his education. His mother died in childbirth and he doesn’t know who his father is. His abilities started manifesting when he was about thirteen years old, but by that time, growing up in the orphanage and largely on the streets, he knew better than to let anyone find out. He also doesn’t use it very often because of the nosebleeds and the nearly incapacitating headaches it gives him. I know it’s a risk to bring him in, especially since he works not only for SCIU, but also the military. However, I’m pretty sure he’s genuine.”

 

Helen nodded. “He sounds extraordinary,” she said gently. “Of course, he’s welcome to come here. You’re right, I’ve never heard of an empath like him. It sounds like using his abilities may be inducing massive hypertensive episodes, dangerously increasing his blood pressure and possibly causing intracranial bleeding, but I don’t want to speculate more until he gets here. I’ll make arrangements immediately to get him and Abby here.”

 

“Thank you—” he began, but she waved him off.

 

“However, getting them here will involve explanations—some of which will come as a shock to you,” she said. There was a sudden flash of apprehension in her expression that raised his hackles immediately. Helen Magnus didn’t show such apprehension without a _damned_ good reason.

 

“What do you mean?” he asked.

 

But instead of answering him, she rose and went over to her desk to use the phone. “Hello darling,” she said in a gentle—and rather flirtatious—voice, “Any problems with this morning’s mission?” She listened for a few moments before continuing. “Good. Will is here and we have another mission ... His girlfriend Abby and another Abnormal need to come in as soon as possible. Could you all pop up for the morning briefing?” Another long moment of silence and then, “All right, tell them to come up as soon as they get the Kreitan colony settled ... Thank you.”

 

Will frowned at the cryptic nature of the one-sided conversation, but after hanging up, she’d only made it halfway across the room before a familiar swirl of red fog announced the arrival of the one man that Will had thought he’d never have to see again.

 

Montague John Druitt. _Jack the Ripper_. The psychopath who had butchered London prostitutes in the late 1880s and had pursued Helen Magnus across more than a century because of his twisted love for her—a love corrupted by the presence of an energy parasite that had turned him into a murderer, but twisted none the less.

 

Will had met him less than a day after he’d first met Magnus and been introduced to the Old City Sanctuary. During that auspicious meeting, Druitt had taken Helen’s daughter, Ashley, and teleported her into the habitat of a deadly Abnormal, which had nearly killed the young woman. That Ashley was also _Druitt’s_ daughter, and that he’d known it, had made that act all the more unforgivable in Will’s eyes.

 

Druitt’s teleporting abilities had been literally tearing him apart and he’d needed Helen’s blood to treat his condition. As a result, he’d been willing to risk maiming and even killing his own _daughter_ in order to terrorise Helen into giving it to him. And Magnus being Magnus had used it as a weapon in a bid to kill the psychopath by tainting the blood with a powerful toxin. However, Druitt proved to be a hard person to kill.

 

Over the years, they’d come to learn that he’d been possessed by energy entity, a non-corporeal parasite that could be forced into dormancy with a massive electrical shock. But Will never lost his understandable wariness of the man, who had been one of the world’s most famous—and violent—serial killers. Even when the malevolent entity was dormant, Montague John Druitt was still a force to be reckoned with.

 

When Ashley had been kidnapped by the Cabal—a shadowy secret organization bent on world domination—and her very DNA mutilated to turn her into a teleporting super-Abnormal assassin sent to destroy Magnus and the Sanctuary Network, Druitt’s energy entity had been dormant for a few months. And when Ashley had committed suicide rather than kill her own mother as the Cabal’s brainwashing had directed her to do, the man’s fury had known no bounds. Along with his and Helen’s vampire friend, Nikola Tesla, Druitt had gone on to slaughter every Cabal member he could find. With that rampage feeding his bloodlust, it was inevitable that the beast within him would rear its ugly head, once again gorging its need to kill.

 

Druitt had accompanied Helen to Hollow Earth when Adam Worth had destroyed Praxis with his time rift experiments. Will had assumed that he’d died when he’d grabbed the power conduits to complete the circuit to enable Helen to follow Worth back through time, as Magnus’ explanation had implied; she had been noticeably reticent on the subject of his whereabouts when she’d returned to the Old City Sanctuary after living through those 113 years a second time.

 

Obviously, he had been _wrong_ in his assumptions.

 

“John followed me back through the rift,” Helen explained quietly; Druitt smirked as Will did his imitation of a fish. He closed his mouth with an audible snap. “I did not find out until nearly a week after I had arrived back in 1898. He managed to contact Watson for help. He had been hurt—badly burned when found in an alleyway not far from where Adam and I had appeared, and the authorities had taken him to the hospital. He was dying of radiation poisoning from the rift. I still had a couple of doses of the cure Adam had brought back with him—thank God he’d been paranoid enough to bring along far more than he’d needed.”

 

“So, you _cured_ him?” Will asked, outraged.

 

“The energy entity is gone, William,” she replied in a hard voice he knew would brook no opposition. “It was destroyed in the massive electrical surge that nearly killed John when he completed the circuit so that I could enter the rift. And I have found a way to inoculate him against another attaching itself to him when he teleports—he’s no danger to you or anyone else.”

 

“Ah, Helen, you wound me,” the object of their discussion drawled in a low, dangerous voice, with a smile that screamed _predator_. “Darling, you make me sound like toothless, old _dog_.”

 

“John … please …” she said with a note of exasperation in her voice.

 

“As my lady commands,” he said with a courtly bow and flourish. “You have my word, Dr. Zimmerman; you have _nothing_ to fear from me.”

 

But Will heard the unspoken threat in his words; _‘you have nothing to fear from me ... yet’_. And he knew that if he did anything to harm or betray Magnus, Druitt would come for him. _Oh no, Magnus’ personal pitbull was definitely_ not _toothless by any stretch of the imagination_.

 

Will nodded and took a deep breath. “Good to know,” he said, “and I suppose Tesla’s already here as well.”

 

Helen grinned and Will gave a low groan at the thought of the irritating vampire scientist. “John went to get him and the last of the New York staff the day their residents arrived here,” she replied.

 

“Hail, hail, the Five’s all here,” he muttered in resignation.

 

“Not quite, but close enough wouldn’t you say, Dr. Zimmerman?” an impossible voice said and Will turned to see two utterly _impossible_ figures standing in the doorway.

 

#


	4. Chapter 3

Will swayed, lightheaded for a moment as he regarded the two people dumbly, before backing away—hands out in front of him, as if that could help deny their existence.

 

 _“You—you’re dead,”_ he finally managed in a hoarse whisper. “You’re both _dead_ —how can you be here?”

 

“Well Miss Griffin,” a shockingly youthful-looking Sir James Watson said chuckling to his companion, “for a couple of ghosts, we do seem rather _corporeal_. Indeed, I certainly _feel_ corporeal—what about you, my dear? Do you feel corporeal today?”

 

Druitt joined Watson in laughing conspiratorially.

 

“Yes,” Clara Griffin replied softly as she held Will’s gaze. He remembered how his heart had hurt when he’d found her body, cold and lifeless on the floor of the London Sanctuary—victim of Ashley and her team of brainwashed super-Abnormal assassins. She wasn’t supposed to have been there. She was _supposed_ to have evacuated with the rest of the residents, but she hadn’t. She’d wanted to fight for her new home and had paid the ultimate price.

 

Or so Will had thought.

 

“Enough James,” Magnus commanded with quiet authority.

 

All levity immediately evaporated as Will returned his attention back to her. “How is this possible, Magnus?” he demanded pointing a shaking finger at the two _ghosts_. “I _saw_ Watson die when his life-support unit stopped working. I saw his body _buried_ beneath a ton of rock in the cave-in at Bhalasaam. I _held_ Clara’s cold, dead _body_ in my arms after one of Ashley’s super-Abnormal buddies butchered her!” he screamed at Magnus, knowing he should calm down, but unable to help himself.

 

“Please Will, calm down,” she said hoarsely, moving towards him. “I can explain—”

 

She was interrupted by the arrival of another _ghost_ , Ranna Seneschal, the leader of Praxis, who was supposed to have died when Adam Worth destroyed the city, entered with Nikola Tesla.

 

“Helen, is everything all right?” Ranna asked in concern. “We heard shouting.”

 

Will felt his anger bubble up and explode. She’d lied to him. Once again, Magnus had lied to him and this time it was a lie of epic proportions, greater even than the lie that was this new Sanctuary City.

 

“Yes _Helen_ , please do _explain_ ,” he sneered sarcastically as he backed away from her. “You were supposed to stay out of history’s way! You weren’t supposed to interfere! You had no right! What did you do—run around saving all your _friends_?”

 

“Will, it wasn’t like that—” she croaked, but anything else she was going to say was cut off by a second teleport event.

 

_Ashley._

 

All the fight went out of him at that moment as he stared at the young woman, who had arrived with Onryuji, ex-head of the Tokyo Sanctuary.

 

“And there it is,” he said bitterly. “You know, I kind of figured you wouldn’t be able to watch her die again, and you know, I really can’t blame you for saving her,” he said as she watched him with tears shining in her blue eyes. “But who made you _God_? How the _fuck_ did you decide who to save, _Helen_? What about _my_ mother?” he screamed at her; tears poured down his cheeks now. “Wasn’t she worthy of the Great Helen Magnus’ benevolence? Or was it just that she was worth _less_ than that creature that _tore her apart?_ ”

 

Suddenly, Will found himself flying through the air, before being stopped by the wood panel-covered concrete wall. Pain, like lightning, whickered throughout his body.

 

 _“Ashley, stop!”_ Magnus shouted as Will looked up into the young woman’s murderous red eyes that seemed to glow from within. All the malevolence, which had made Ashley Magnus such a formidable opponent in their war with the Cabal, was still evident in the hellish fangs she sported and the long, black claws extending from the tips of her fingers.

 

As Magnus crouched beside Will with her medical bag, Druitt put his arms around his daughter.

 

“Come now, my darling,” he said in an infinitely gentle voice that Will would never have associated with him. “Come back to us.”

 

Before Will’s eyes, Ashley changed from her vampiric morph back to the human girl he’d known three years ago. But her blue eyes held a lot more than just anger; in them he saw disappointment. Turning his attention back to Magnus, he watched the silent tears tracing down her face as she checked him over with knowledgeable fingers for signs of a concussion or broken bones.

 

“They all died, isolated and alone,” he said quietly, all his anger spent as his reason asserted itself again. He reached up to gently cup her cheek, wiped away the tears with his thumb. In that moment, Helen Magnus looked every second of her nearly 275 years. “You had to watch them all die a second time before you could save them. And you could only save them once they were out of History’s way.”

 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save her, Will,” she whispered raggedly, her heartbreak in her voice.

 

“You couldn’t,” he replied softly, remembering that horrific night he’d watched his mother die in the agony of a blood-soaked nightmare. “You never could—because _you_ were already there, saving _me_. You couldn’t cross paths with your younger self and by the time her body was left alone, there was nothing to save.”

 

“I’m sorry,” she repeated and he nodded his acceptance. She took a deep breath and continued, “You don’t seem to have any broken bones.”

 

“No, just a bruised ego and an aching backside,” he quipped. “And I deserve both.”

 

She gave him a wan smile and helped him to stand; he did something he never really thought of doing before—he pulled her into a tight hug. She stiffened for a moment and then relaxed into his embrace. “I’m sorry too,” he whispered in her ear.

 

 _“Okay ... who is this guy and why is he hugging up on_ my _Helen?”_ a woman’s voice demanded from behind him.

 

Helen nodded, accepting his apology before stepping back and turning to the two brunette women who’d just entered. Blotting her eyes with the backs of her hands, she said, “Charlotte darling, I’d like you to meet Will.”

 

Warning bells clanged in the back of Will’s mind.

 

_‘My Helen?’_

_‘Charlotte darling?’_

 

He watched, eyes widening, as the taller of the two women—the one with the short curly hair—strode over to Magnus, fishing tissues from her pocket and wiping Helen’s face as her other arm snaked around the older woman’s waist in a most proprietary way. That Helen allowed this obvious intimacy in public spoke loudly of just _who_ this woman was to her.

 

“Emotional reunion?” Charlotte murmured, her voice laced with concern, and Helen nodded.

 

Will met Druitt’s gaze; the older man seemed to read his mind with surprising facility and smiled that slow, predatory smile, as if daring him to make an issue of it. Will gave a surprised blink; there would always be things he would inevitably take _issue_ with when it came to Helen Magnus, but this was _not_ one of them.

 

“Most emotional,” Helen whispered resting her forehead against the exotic-looking woman’s forehead for a moment. “Dr. Charlotte Benoit,” she continued stepping out of her lover’s embrace and gesturing towards Will, “Dr. William Zimmerman.”

 

“Ah, your protégé,” Charlotte said smiling and offering him her hand.

 

Things clicked into place as they shook hands. “Dr. L. C. Benoit, the virologist Magnus met on Grande Comore last fall when she went to meet with Feliz,” he said putting it all together as he smiled at the beautiful brunette with the dark almond-shaped eyes. No wonder Helen had taken a couple of days off after meeting her banker on the remote island off the coast of Africa. “Pleased to meet you,” he finished formally.

 

“Likewise,” Charlotte Benoit replied.

 

“And this is Dr. Imogene Worth,” Helen said quietly as she introduced the second brunette.

 

Will stared. “Imogene Worth—as in Adam Worth’s _daughter_? I thought she died,” he blurted out before he could censor himself.

 

“Indeed,” Imogene Worth drawled. “But my father didn’t see fit to claim _his thirteen-year-old daughter_ for burial after he witnessed my … _death_. Instead he set to work on inventing a way of killing everyone in London,” she said bitterly and Will cringed. “It fell to James and Helen to claim my body and give me a proper burial before the coroner sent me to a pauper’s grave or sold me to the medical school for dissection. It turned out I was only in a deep coma—whatever process my future father had put me through had side effect of protecting me physically, as well as slowing my aging, as we later found out. After nursing me back to health, Helen and John took me abroad, raising me and keeping all of us out of History’s—and young Helen’s—way while we built this place.” Her English accent was even more muddied than Magnus’, which spoke of a century of living among other cultures all across the planet

 

“I see,” he replied gathering his wits; he realised that this is probably where Magnus got the idea of saving people after their _‘deaths’_. “Well, I’m pleased to meet you.”

 

“Likewise,” she said shaking his offered hand.

 

Helen took charge after a beat. “Everyone, Will brings further news from SCIU and the UN,” she said, “and we’ll have a thorough debriefing later, but more importantly we need to plan a rescue. His girlfriend, Abby, and a rather unique empathic Abnormal they’ve been working closely with, need to come in. Before we get started, Ashley, could you pop up to the store and get Will’s bags? Sylvia has left them at the tunnel entrance.”

 

“Sure Mom,” Ashley replied nodding as she turned and disappeared in a swirl of red smoke. Less than a minute later she returned, Will’s duffle over one shoulder and his laptop bag over the other.

 

Taking his laptop bag from her with a murmured _“thank you”_ , he opened it and handed Magnus a file folder of papers. She opened it and rifled through them quickly before looking up in confusion.

 

“Will, these are scientific papers—they have nothing to do with SCIU or the military.”

 

He grinned and took the folder from her unresisting fingers. “Victor placed another level of security on them in case someone tried to read them,” he said with a soft chuckle. “His illusions are fairly easy to break once you know they’re there and if you know what the original object he’s changed looked like,” he explained concentrating on the folder and visualising the contents as vividly as he could manage. “All you have to do is _concentrate_ hard enough.”

 

His grin widened as he heard their collective gasp of surprise as the folder changed before their eyes into a distinctive black folder with the Department of Defense logo on the front.

 

Handing it back to Helen, he said, “I spent a week memorizing every page, every aspect of that folder, and I wish to God that I didn’t know what they said.”

 

Helen’s eyes grew almost comically wide as she glanced through the restored papers. “And you’re certain these are real?” she asked hoarsely.

 

“As certain as I can be with an illusion-creating Abnormal,” he replied. “But like I said, all my instincts tell me that he’s genuine.”

 

“What is it, Helen?” Watson asked.

 

“SCIU’s plans, with the blessing of the major powers on the UN Security Council, for the systematic extermination of the Abnormal Homeland District and each community of Abnormals they find, including the Sanctuaries,” she replied hoarsely.

 

“But we already knew what they planned,” Nikola said dismissively. “Wasn’t that what that whole mess in Old City was all about?”

 

“Not like this—” Magnus said, anger hardening her voice as she handed of the folder to him. “It’s all there in explicit black and white with their original signatures. John, Ashley, I’ll need you to go get them. Will, do you know where they’ll be? Do they each follow a routine?”

 

 _“Son of a bitch!”_ the vampire swore as he flipped quickly through the documents, reading them at superhuman speed.

 

“No routines, other than work,” Will replied with a frown, “but in response to a rather sexist remark from a colleague about Abby _‘climbing the ladder on her back’_ when she started acting as the go-between for Victor and me after our initial meeting, we decided to encourage that perception around SCIU, since we’re done with the place and the government.  They think she’s dating Victor, so they go out to dinner a lot ... movies ... the whole speil.”

 

“So how do you know he’s not interested in her?” Clara asked in a playful voice.

 

“Because he’s far more interested in _me_ than he is in her!” Will retorted before he realised it. He felt his face heating up as a wave of laughter rippled throughout the room. “Ah … it’s another reason he wants out. Officially, gays in the military may be able to out themselves now without fear of retribution, but the reality is definitely another kettle of fish.” Clara nodded, serious and professional once more. “Anyway, since I quit SCIU last week, Abby, at least, is bound to be under a lot of scrutiny—especially since they’ve probably already figured out that I’ve gone. I don’t know how good they were at tracking me—I tried to take every precaution, but I’ve been worried about them tracking me here.”

 

“Oh, they’re good,” Helen literally purred like the cat that got into the best cream. “But my people are better. I made sure they lost you when you left Moscow and before you got to Jakarta.”

 

“Thank you,” Will said in relief, “it’s certainly a load off my mind. Your best bet would probably be to stake-out Abby’s building and take them together.”

 

Helen drummed her fingers thoughtfully against her desktop. “Nikola, where are you at with the portable ECM jammers?” she asked.

 

“Hmm?” the vampire inventor said distractedly as he continued to read the documents.

 

“Nikola, focus please,” Magnus said with familiar exasperation. “The portable jammers—are they finished?”

 

“Yes, yes, of course,” he replied dismissively. “All your scruffy little helper and his girlfriend are doing is wasting time making them pretty.”

 

But Will was sure that Henry and Erika were doing a lot more than just making the devices _‘pretty’_ —like making sure they didn’t blow up in their users’ faces.

 

“And Ranna, is Thor still off the coast of British Columbia?” Magnus asked the former leader of Praxis.

 

“Yes, Sophie wants him and his family to be thoroughly rested before continuing the next leg of their flight down to Antarctica,” Ranna replied. “Their next rest stop is to be off the coast of Chile. Why?”

 

“Do you think he’d be amenable to creating a lovely little atmospheric disturbance in the Pacific Northwest?” she asked with a positively wolfish grin.

 

Ranna chuckled. “For Sophie, I think he would do just about anything,” she replied. “I have never seen anyone connect so quickly or thoroughly with an Avatar, not even our hyper-empaths.”

 

 _“Thor?”_ Will said in confusion; the only _‘Thor’_ he knew was the Norse god of thunder and the Marvel Comics’ superhero based on that myth.

 

Ranna answered quietly. “Another of the Earth’s hyperspecies Abnormals; he usually lives in the high Arctic, where he is also known by the Inuit as Silla, among other names, but with so much human encroachment and habitat destruction, it isn’t safe for his kind there anymore, so we’re relocating him and most of his clan to Antarctica—his daughter and a few other younglings chose to remain in the Arctic. He’s a weather elemental and shapeshifter, but he has not appeared in the Avatar Chamber for more than a century,” she explained. “Your friend, Sophie, is the first to be able to connect with him and draw him back to the Avatar Council again. Kali, Kainen and Paredros are most happy to have him back. Hopefully, in time the others, or their descendents, will see fit to return as well.”

 

_“The others?”_

 

She nodded with an understanding smile. “Epona, Nuwa, Eingana, Olodumare and Q’uq’umatz,” she replied. “They were known as the Council of the Nine, but we are not sure if they still survive. They have been gone for centuries, but I hope that as people get settled, they may be willing to try connecting to the Avatars. As a matter of fact, since Fallon’s betrayal, Kali is still in need of a Herald, if you are interested.”

 

“Will I have to swallow a spider?” he asked warily, remembering the symbiotic Abnormal spider—the Macri—which had somehow crawled down his throat and not only made him its host, but had also allowed him to telepathically contact the giant, marine-dwelling hyperspecies Abnormal spider whose Avatar was personified as the Indian goddess, Kali.

 

“No,” Ranna laughed. “Since the Macri died prematurely when it was forced out of you, and Kali is not due to produce another for at least 50 years, you would use the neural interface Sophie, Jarrusol and I use to communicate with them in the Avatar Chamber. Kali will sometimes allow Jarrusol to communicate with her, but it is very rare as Paredros is extremely proprietary about his Herald—as are all the hyperspecies Abnormals. Kali and I are not very compatible and Sophie has not been a Herald long enough for me to get a sense of her compatibility with anyone outside of Thor.”

 

Will took a deep breath; he’d never expected to be given another chance to communicate with Kali—the last time he’d done so, he’d literally had to _die_ in order to make the connection.

 

“Ah … why don’t I think about that and get back to you later,” he temporised.

 

She chuckled again. “As you wish, Dr. Zimmerman,” she said before sobering and turning to Magnus. “Helen, I will speak to Sophie and report back within the hour.”

 

“Thank you,” Helen replied as the other woman left. “All right everyone, let’s assume that Thor will create a storm for us; we need to get this plan hammered out and in play ASAP.”

 

#

 


	5. Chapter 4 - March 30, 2012

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sick today, so thought I'd do something more constructive than cough up a lung. LOL!!! Let me know if you see any egregious mistakes. Enjoy!

Jeremy Tomy hated surveillance work; it was a break from pushing paper to be sure, but none-the-less, he hated it … especially on wet, rainy nights when the cold got into your bones and settled there, which around here meant practically every night between September and June. Damn SCIU for being so bloody cheap as to rent this draughty, barely-heated apartment, but ever since Will Zimmerman had slipped through Addison’s fingers, coupled with the disappearance of the entire Sanctuary Network and all those monsters they harboured, Abby Corrigan was one of the few of Helen Magnus’ known associates they could still find, so that meant twenty-four-seven surveillance.

 

While the Sanctuary buildings still stood—well, except for the Old City headquarters—most of the Network, its people and assets, had simply disappeared without a trace and Addison was catching hell for it. To make matters worse, the Hollow Earth Abnormals had disappeared from the Old City detention area the same night that Magnus’ Sanctuary there had blown sky high. Only the fact that _all_ the Hollow Earth Abnormals had disappeared from holding areas around the world at about the same time had saved Greg Addison from the full wrath of the Joint Chiefs and the UN Security Council who oversaw SCIU.

 

 _Abnormals_ , Tomy thought shaking his head. _Freaky shit!_ It had blown his mind when he’d been read in on the whole scene regarding what the Special Counter-Insurgency Unit was truly all about. But why anyone would want to _protect_ those _things_ was beyond him. Granted, he’d heard through the grapevine that some of them might be useful for producing certain pharmaceuticals and other _shit_ , but if that was the case, you pen the useful ones in and farm them like you would any other _animal_ , not put them up in glorified hotel suites the way Magnus did!

 

A sudden noise grabbed his attention and he realised that Corrigan had arrived home with the new boyfriend. He turned the monitor to face him so that he could enjoy the show—not that there was apt to be much of a show to enjoy. These two were as boring as watching paint dry.

 

 _“I hope you don’t mind leftovers tonight,”_ the young woman said with a note of laughter in her voice.

 

 _“Depends on how left over they are,”_ Hilson replied warily.

 

She laughed again, a bright, sparkling laugh full of fun. _Jesus!_ He wondered again how she ever made agent—she always seemed so damned _ditzy_.

 

_“McDaniels to Tomy; the lovebirds are in the nest.”_

 

He growled at the radio before picking it up and responding. As the new guy on the team, he’d of course pulled the nightshift and had to put up with the older agents’ bullshit.

 

“Yeah, nice of you to report in … ten minutes _after_ they get home, asswipe.”

 

 _“Well we’ve got the choice of three-day-old Chinese, two-day-old pizza or the soup I made last week,”_ Corrigan said in the background.

 

 _“Up yours, you fucking peeping-tom,”_ Sean McDaniels retorted.

 

Tomy took off the headset and dropped it around his neck so that he could concentrate on the conversation with McDaniels. “Yeah, yeah ... when are you bringing up my dinner?”

 

 _“Sorry, can’t rightly leave our post, now can we?”_ McDaniels taunted.

 

 _“Why don’t you order in?”_ Connie Rivera laughed as the line went dead, leaving Tomy to stew in his own hunger pains.

 

“Assholes,” he muttered.

 

Glancing up at the monitor, he was in time to see Corrigan kiss the cocoa-skinned man before he let himself out of the apartment. Immediately, Tomy brought the headphones up to one ear. Before the door fully closed, Corrigan laughed and jerked it open again, shouting, _“Don’t forget the extra order of kimchee this time.”_

 

_“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”_

 

 _“Not on your life, Hilson,”_ she chuckled. Tomy groaned; they were so damned _cute_ , they made his teeth ache with their sweetness. _“And hurry back,”_ she said in a low, sultry voice, before laughing again. _“I’m starving!”_

 

 _“God, you’re a bottomless pit,”_ Hilson retorted as the elevator pinged, announcing its arrival. _“Where the hell do you put it all?”_

 

 _“Wouldn’t you like to know?”_ she flirted and closed the door.

 

Tomy watched her giggle again as she headed for the bedroom, unbuttoning her blouse while she walked through the apartment.

 

“Tomy to McDaniels,” he called over the radio. “The boyfriend’s left to get dinner—Korean barbeque by the sounds of it.”

 

_“Roger that. What do you want to eat?”_

 

“Two Big Macs with bacon and extra cheese, large fries and a large Coke.”

 

_“In other words, a heart attack in a bag. Gotta go—boyfriend’s pulling out.”_

 

Once in her bedroom, Corrigan took off her top and then sat down on her bed to pull off her socks and pants, before donning a pair of comfortable-looking sweats, tank and a hoodie. One thing Hilson got right—he didn’t know where she put all that food she packed away, because that girl had a tight, smoking-hot little bod; must be all that running at 5:00 in the morning.

 

He switched easily from one camera to the next, following her movements into the bathroom to wash her face. After patting it dry with a fluffy, white towel and applying some sort of cream, she padded back to the kitchen and began pulling crap from the fridge and tossing it.

 

 _“God, when did I turn into such a slob,”_ she muttered to herself.

 

And Tomy thought, _slob, what slob? Call me lady, when you’ve got garbage piled high because you haven’t been home other than to sleep, and a month’s worth of laundry strewn throughout your bedroom_.

 

Suddenly, the picture went blank and the sound ceased abruptly. Checking the computer, he saw that the WiFi signal to the cameras had been lost, probably due to the intensifying storm.

 

“Guess I’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way,” he sighed, turning on his digital recorder and getting out the high-powered binoculars. “Lost signal to surveillance cameras at approximately 6:45 pm due to the storm,” he said beginning his running commentary for the camcorder recording. “Digital camcorder is running and continuing visual surveillance with binoculars. Subject Abigail Corrigan has finished cleaning refrigerator and is proceeding to wash dishes manually …”

 

God, this is boring, he thought tiredly as he continued to watch the woman clean her apartment, commenting as she moved from one task to then next, while occasionally adjusting the camera to keep her in frame and in focus.

 

By the time the boyfriend returned about thirty minutes later with two take-out bags, she was curled up on the couch watching some chick-flick. They quickly helped themselves to the food before settling down to watch TV again. He adjusted the focus on the binoculars again—it was really starting to come down now, making visibility nearly impossible.

 

Tomy’s stomach grumbled as he watched them eat and as his stomach growled, he cursed his _‘low-man-on-the-totem-pole’_ position in drawing the night shift. As if in answer to his prayers, McDaniels let himself in carrying a familiar take-out bag, adorned with the Golden Arches logo, and a large soft drink cup.

 

“Here,” he said curtly, dropping his burdens onto the dining table and then hurrying off to the bathroom. By the time he came out again, Tomy was happily devouring his first Big Mac.

 

“How’s it going?” he asked, nodding to binoculars on the table.

 

“Fine,” Tomy replied around a mouth full of food before swallowing. “They’re having dinner in front of the TV. Had to go to manual—the storm’s fritzed out the signal from the bugs in her apartment a little while ago.”

 

“Any calls?”

 

Tomy pointed to the computer log. “See for yourself—nothing in or out since they got home.”

 

McDaniels glanced at the computer screen and nodded before picking up the binoculars and moving closer to the window. “Can barely make anything out in this weather,” he muttered.

 

“Tell me about it,” Tomy groused. “And from the looks of it, I’m going to be spending the night freezing my ass off trying to see anything through it.”

 

“Quit your griping,” McDaniels said turning away from the window. “At least it’s dry in here—and a hell of a lot warmer than a car as well.”

 

Tomy grunted at the observation, just as the power went out. “Shit!” he swore softly, peering out at the darkened building across the street. “Note—at approximately 7:25 pm, electrical power was lost for at least this block, including the subject’s building. Will continue video surveillance and visual surveillance with binoculars,” he reported for the edification of the surveillance recording. “Well at least the entire surveillance set-up is on the autonomous generator.”

 

“Will it last until morning?”

 

“It should last at least 20 hours—besides, the replacement is all charged,” he replied. “Looks like they’ve broken out the candles.” One by one, flickering lights slowly appeared in a number of apartment windows in the building opposite, including Corrigan’s apartment, along with the steady beam of what could only be a flashlight. 

 

He followed the lights, first to the kitchen and then towards the bedroom. “Looks like they’re packing it in for the night,” he observed. “Let me just switch to infra-red.” As he switched over, two false-colour images showed up on the computer screen, only to be washed out by a bright light.

 

“Damn,” he said trying to adjust the contrast on the camera. “A couple of candles shouldn’t be affecting this thing so badly.”

 

“What do you mean?” McDaniels asked in concern.

 

“Well, it is the latest in _thermal_ imaging technology, so it depends on heat—body heat with people and animals—but if there is another heat source, it can throw things off,” he explained. “Hell, it’s what—sixty degrees outside? So even turning up the thermostat would probably affect it. Problem is that it seemed to be a pretty intense point source that turned on and blanketed the place.”

 

“So, can you or can’t you get the image back?” McDaniels demanded.

 

Tomy returned the camcorder to its default mode, and picked up the binoculars. He could just barely pick up the faint silhouette of two figures climbing into bed.

 

“The bad news is that we can’t get a clear thermal image, but the good news is they’re going to bed.”

 

McDaniels was silent for a moment, then, “I don’t like this,” he rumbled. “You think that it’s a _coincidence_ they flash-increased the heat in there so that it blankets out the camera just _after_ you lose _all_ the feeds from the bugs?”

 

Tomy gaped in surprise and increasing dread as McDaniels unholstered his radio and gun. “I don’t think so. Rivera—get your ass out of the car and meet me in Corrigan’s building,” he said storming out of the apartment. “They’ve swamped the camera by increasing the temperature in the apartment and, with the storm, the bugs are useless!”

 

#

 


	6. Chapter 5

They materialised in a cavern of rock, obviously deep underground, making Abby suddenly feel a bit claustrophobic despite the high ceiling. The ledge that John Druitt and Ashley Magnus— _now there was a surprise, considering Helen Magnus’ daughter had supposedly_ died _nearly three years ago_ —had teleported she and Victor to, overlooked a smooth, circular depression, which contained a large, cube-shaped box made from a silvery metal mesh and framed on all sides by a cage of stout rods made from a darker metal.

 

Abby was still running on the adrenaline from their narrow escape from the SCIU agents who had been kicking down her door just as Ashley and Druitt had teleported them to Victor’s apartment to pick up his things.

 

Thank God, that Will had had the foresight to have them pack duffles with belongings they wanted to escape with, which Victor had disguised as dirty laundry bags _before_ SCIU had set up their surveillance. All she’d needed to do was retrieve hers from the guest room and grab her personal laptop case and other essentials. Her SCIU-issued laptop and cell phone had been left behind on her night table with Victor’s.

 

She bent over now, hands on her knees, breathing deeply in order to overcome her nausea and restore some sort of equilibrium as Victor rubbed gentle circles on her back.

 

“We should keep moving,” Druitt said quietly, leading them down a flight of stairs carved out of the rock face.

 

As Abby went down the stairs after Victor, Ashley brought up the rear, carrying two of Abby’s bags. A woman’s voice reverberated off the rock. For a moment, Abby thought it was Magnus, but although this woman also had an English accent, it was distinctly different from the Sanctuary leader’s voice.

 

“Welcome back, John, Ashley,” the disembodied voice said. “I trust you had a successful mission?”

 

“Quite successful, milady,” Druitt replied courteously, but with a note of humour in his voice.

 

“Well the Cage’s systems are fully charged and the cargo has been secured—you’re ready to make the transfer to the Sanctuary,” she said with a chuckle. “And Ashley, please do remind your mother that my boys are quite anxious for their promised tour of the finished facility.”

 

“Will do, cuz,” Ashley replied with a wide grin as they entered the contraption that was about the size of a very large frieght elevator. It contained a number of large crates and boxes and had three rows of five metal poles sticking up from the centre of the floor.

 

“Stand by please—transport spike in thirty seconds,” the woman said as the digital display began the countdown.

 

“All right, kiddies, keep your hands inside the ride at all times,” Ashley quipped with the same cheeky grin as she and Druitt dropped the bags they were carrying and moved to opposite sides of the apparatus to grabbed two of the poles in front of them. “You guys, hang onto the poles in front of you,” she ordered, and Abby and Victor hastened to grab the closest metal poles and braced themselves for whatever was to come. “Hang on tight, you’re in for a _wild_ ride.”

 

“Ready my darling?” Druitt asked smiling at his daughter.

 

“Born ready, Dad,” she replied just as the countdown hit zero and Abby felt something like a jolt of electricity race through her, and in a dizzying, gut-wrenching moment she felt as if she’d been torn apart and flung to the four winds.

 

One heart-stopping eternity later, Abby found herself in a similar cavern, but this one was even larger and was bustling with people on the glass-covered mezzanine, as well as in the rooms high above, where the large windows showed what were obviously control rooms; in four other circular indentations, sat empty “Cage” transport devices.

 

“Cage Alpha, transit is complete,” a man’s voice reported. “Powering down systems; passengers may exit when ready.”

 

As Abby stared at Ashley in utter shock, the girl laughed heartily. “Welcome to your new home.”

 

“W-what the h-hell was that?” she stuttered out, trying to catch her breath and fighting valiantly not to toss her cookies. Victor didn’t seem to be in much better shape, although with his darker skin, he didn’t look quite as _green_ as she probably did.

 

“That roller-coaster ride was the Cage, our mass teleportation device,” Ashley replied, seemingly unaffected, but since she and Druitt had the ability to teleport, it probably didn’t affect them much. She opened the apparatus’ door and stood aside to let them out. “It’s our safest way to transport people and cargo directly to the Sanctuary, since the shield is usually up.”

 

“But I thought you couldn’t teleport across electromagnetic shields,” Abby said following her out of the device.

 

Ashley shrugged. “Mom and her friends figured it out by studying my Dad’s teleportation ability for the last fifty years,” she replied.

 

“How does it work?” Victor asked eagerly.

 

“Beats the hell out of me,” the younger Magnus woman replied as Will raced down the stairs, followed by Magnus, Kate Freelander and a bunch of other people that Abby didn’t recognise.

 

Anything else Ashley might have said was lost as Will grabbed Abby into a tight hug, swinging her around and then kissing her soundly.

 

“Well, I guess _someone_ missed me,” she teased before he plundered her mouth again with a breathtakingly deep French kiss.

 

“Oh yeah,” he husked looking down into her eyes with such loving intensity.

 

“Me too,” she murmured, giving him another peck on the lips.

 

He didn’t let her go as they finally moved apart. Keeping his left arm circling her waist, he extended his right to Victor.

 

“Glad you could make it,” he said as they shook hands. “And I can’t thank you enough for having our backs.”

 

Victor grinned broadly. “I’d say we’re even Zimmerman—that was … _wow!_ And this place looks amazing!” he said as Abby’s attention was caught by a large metal sphere that rocketed into the cavern on tracks above the walkway and stopped with jarring suddenness. The door opened, disgorging four people, before sealing closed again and the sphere rocketed away.

 

Will laughed. “And you’ve only seen the garage—wait until you see the rest of it,” he said steering them to one side as a small forklift pulled up to the Cage. Turning to Magnus, he introduced her to Victor. “Lieutenant Victor Hilson, allow me to introduce Dr. Helen Magnus, leader of Sanctuary City.”

 

 _“Sanctuary City?”_ Abby yelped and a ripple of laughter spread contagiously through the crowd.

 

“Sanctuary for All, Abby,” Magnus said sagely and Abby nodded, understanding the older woman immediately; Magnus would have needed a city to house all the Abnormals from her global Sanctuary Network—not to mention, all the Hollow Earth Abnormals.

 

Turning to Victor, Magnus shook his hand firmly. “It’s lovely to meet you, Lieutenant Hilson,” she said smiling. “Welcome to the Sanctuary.”

 

“Thank you, ma’am,” he replied formally. “And thank you for allowing me to come.”

 

“There is no _‘allowing’_ about it, lieutenant,” she replied. “Every being needs a home to call their own and to be who they are without censure. Hopefully, the Sanctuary will provide that to all who seek it out.”

 

#


	7. Chapter 6 - March 31, 2012

When Abby woke up the next morning, wrapped in the warm circle of Will’s arms, it took her a minute to remember where she was, and as the events of the previous day—and especially last night—flooded back to her, she let out a happy little laugh. She ached in the most _delicious_ places.

 

“Hey there,” Will murmured as he dropped a kiss on her naked shoulder.

 

“Hey yourself,” she replied turning to face him, wrapping her arms about his neck and drawing his head down to give him a proper kiss. His morning breath wasn’t too bad and after the first taste of it, he tasted of sweat and sex and Will. Hoping that her own breath wasn’t too offensive was her last coherent thought for the next few moments.

 

“I could get used to waking up like this,” he said as the need for air broke the kiss.

 

“Me too,” she giggled.

 

“Well, we should get up soon if we’re going to make it to breakfast,” he told her. “Or we could stay here—the Big Guy said he’d bring us a tray if he doesn’t see us by 10:00 am.”

 

“Hmm … what time is it now?”

 

“A little after eight.”

 

“Wait a minute— _the Big Guy_?” she said in confusion. “I thought Kate said that Caleb and his men had killed him.”

 

Will shook his head. “Apparently, he was pretty badly beaten and close to death, but his thicker dermal layer, denser muscle mass and stronger bones protected him to a great degree. Druitt rescued him, when Ashley teleported Helen from the Sanctuary just seconds before it blew up. He’s almost fully recovered now.”

 

“That’s wonderful,” she murmured into his chest. “I’m really glad he made it; but what about Ashley? I know last night Helen said that she and Druitt would teleport in just after someone died and either put them into that “freaky zombie stasis” as Kate calls it, or steal the bodies as soon after death as possible to revive them. But from what I understood of your explanation, there was nothing left of Ashley to rescue when she teleported across the active EM shield around the Old City Sanctuary. Wasn’t she vapourised?”

 

“It certainly looked that way to us back when it happened,” Will replied hoarsely as he sat up and pulled her up to lounge comfortably between his legs. “But even then, we’d noticed that there had been fluctuations in the shield just around the time Ashley teleported—and Magnus spent days chasing sensor ghosts … clinging desperately to the hope that Ash had somehow survived teleportation through the shield. It was heartbreaking to watch her go from one theory to the next … grasping at straws to explain how Ashley might have survived.

 

“Well, it turned out that the older Helen— _this Helen_ —Imogene Worth and this John _had_ been there, just outside the Sanctuary in a truck containing a portable apparatus similar to the Cage. From what I understand, since she knew the shield’s frequency parameters, the exact time of Ashley’s teleportation and, from decades studying Druitt, something called the quantum string vibration of the teleport, she was able to tune the capture device to the shield. In effect, she created a hole through which Ashley’s teleport could pass, and she was able to set up conditions inside the device to vibrate in sympathy with Ashley’s teleport event vibrations in order to capture her mid-teleport, then rematerialize her and the other super-Abnormal she’d teleported with. However, the other girl died because the changes the Cabal put her through eventually destroyed her body—breaking it down from the inside out. She didn’t have the protection Ashley did being the daughter of two Source Blood-changed Abnormals.”

 

“Wow!” Abby said in amazement.

 

“Tell me about it,” Will said chuckling. “Apparently, Magnus and Imogene created the Cages as a sort of side effect of creating the capture device. They work in a similar way—that’s how the transport box of the Cage could teleport through the shields of Sanctuary City. In a nutshell, the sending station’s Cage sets the teleportation quantum string vibration, while the receiving station sets up a sympathetic vibration to guide the transport box in; then the box matches frequency to the sender’s shield, punches out, and when it reaches its destination, it matches frequency to the receiver’s shield and punches in. Once inside the receiving station’s Cage, the sympathetic vibrations cause the transport box and its contents to rematerialize. And of course, somewhere in there, you’ve got the whole conversion of matter to energy thing and back again, but please don’t ask me to explain it. I think that outside of Magnus, Watson and Imogene—she’s the science head—probably only Nikola, Henry and Erika can understand it.”

 

“Wow,” Abby repeated, unable to think of anything else to say. What could one say to something so mindboggling?

 

Her stomach chose this moment to make itself known by rumbling embarrassingly; Will laughed.

 

“I think we’d better feed the Monster before it decides to eat me.”

 

“At least I know you’d be delicious,” she purred suggestively and he laughed again.

 

“If we get into that, we won’t make it to breakfast,” he warned; she pouted and then shrieked loudly as he tickled her ribs and under-arms. She finally escaped, squirming out of his grasp and streaking to the bathroom with him in hot pursuit.

 

It took them another hour to shower—had to make sure _everything_ was thoroughly clean—and make their way down to the large, glass-walled dining facility overlooking a beautiful park and extensive gardens. Will explained that there were a number of them throughout the city, each catering to a variety of diets depending on their clientele. In addition, every apartment or habitat had its own pantry—and kitchenette if needed—tailored to the needs of its inhabitants.

 

After serving themselves—buffet-style—Will quickly checked a large digital touch screen for Henry’s name; a seating plan, he explained, necessary in order to find anyone since the the facility was so large with dining areas spread out over three floors. Once they found the table with Henry, Erika, Victor and a couple of people Abby didn’t recognise, Will waved their Sanctuary ID cards over the table’s reader, which added them to its seating plan.

 

As they settled down to eat, he introduced her to Sophie Davis, a Human empath who interfaced with the new hyperspecies Abnormal, Thor, and to Jarrusol, a Herusan from Praxis, who interfaced with Paredros.

 

“Paredros?” Abby asked curiously.

 

“In the early theology of your Ancient Greeks,” Jarrusol answered pleasantly, yellow eyes sparkling as he warmed to his subject, “Paredros was a consort of Demeter, the Mother Goddess, the Earth Mother dedicated to the devine aspect of growing things and agriculture. So, as Thor is an Air and Weather Elemental, Paredros is an Earth Elemental—”

 

“I thought that Kali was the Earth Elemental of the group,” she said in confusion. “Didn’t she create some new islands when she got mad a couple of years ago?”

 

The older Hollow Earth Abnormal smiled as he nodded. “Kali is indeed an Earth Elemental, but with a different area of influence, if you will. She can control physical things like the movements of tectonic plates and the Earth’s crust. And as a marine-based Abnormal, she is also a Water Elemental who can also affect the physcal aspects of water to a certain extent. Similarly, Kainan is also an Earth Elemental, and a Fire Elemental as well. His habitat is in the zone between the mantle and the crust, and he deals with the interactions between the two, like magma flows and pressure regulation. Kali and Kainan will sometimes work together to mediate and mitigate shifts in the Earth’s crust.

 

“Paredros is yet another kind of Earth Elemental, a _Biological_ Elemental if you will, in that he influences living things in the biosphere’s interconnected ecosystems, more specifically, the growth of microorganisms and simple plants, animals and plankton at the bottom of the food chain. While Kainan was responsible for the earthquake that countered Kali’s second tsunami, it was Paredros who caused the sudden red tide, the rapid algal bloom that altered the viscosity of the water to counter her earlier wave.”

 

“ _Dude_ ,” Henry laughed, “when I think about it, I _still_ can’t believe it—and I was _there_ in middle of the ocean while it was happening!”

 

Abby shook her head, unable to contain her own awe. “Each time I think I can’t be more shocked by the wonders of this world after meeting Will and Magnus, I’m proven wrong,” she said with a rueful laugh.

 

“I know—it’s awesome, isn’t it?” Victor said excitedly. “Ms Seneschal has already invited me to try the Avatar interface this afternoon at 1400 hours, and I have an appointment with Commander MacRae—the head of security—at 1100 hours, right after my medical check-up.”

 

“That reminds me,” Will said activating the screen in front of her and passing her card across the reader. “We should check what time Magnus has scheduled your check-up, Abby. It would be in your schedule under the tab _‘Medical Department’_ ,” he said as she entered her new passcode on the touch screen.

 

“It looks like she’s sent me a number of time blocks she’s free for the next three days,” Abby said noting the red-filled boxes on the schedule representing an hour for each block of time.

 

“Choose one and tap it,” Will advised quietly. “It will turn green and copy the appointment to your day planner, while the other blocks will disappear. Then go to the _‘Security Department’_ tab and check if Declan or Jono Toland have sent any requests for appointments, and the same for Ranna—Ms Seneschal under the _‘Diplomatic Affairs’_ tab.”

 

“Diplomatic affairs?” Abby asked as she quickly made her selections.

 

It was the young woman, Sophie, who answered her. “Well, in a very real way, diplomats are exactly what we are,” she said; her voice was quiet—not even loud enough to rise above the din of the room—but it carried well enough and Abby found it oddly soothing. “The hyperspecies Abnormals are ancient beings, each with their own lives and motivations—they’re not pets to be led around on leashes and they’re certainly not our slaves. When they choose to work with us, it is just that—their choice, and it _must_ be respected!”

 

Abby nodded. “I understand,” she said solemnly. “Thanks for explaining.”

 

“Ranna is also in charge of those who maintain contact with our allies on the outside,” Will explained further and Abby frowned in confusion; she thought that Magnus had severed contact will all world governments. Will seemed to read her mind with that uncanny accuracy he often displayed. “Not government contacts necessarily, although we still have quite a few of those on the down low, but Magnus does maintain a number of safehouses and other contacts throughout the world—contacts made under other aliases.”

 

“Like the one we passed through before teleporting here,” Abby said, realising what an unbelievably complex and daunting prospect the administration of the Sanctuary City must be, and it all had to be done in secret without government support. And the more people who knew the secret, the more likely it was to get out.

 

It was at that moment that she realised that she literally didn’t know _where_ on Earth she was. Her stomach clenched painfully at the thought.

 

“Exactly,” Will said before turning his attention back to his breakfast.

 

“And there are also the Hollow Earth Enclaves in those areas once controlled by Praxis, but were spared the destruction of the city,” Jarrusol continued. “Personnel like your friend, Ms Freelander, and her fiancé act as diplomats to those who chose to remain in the Enclaves rather than relocate here. Ranna administers to their needs as well.”

 

“Well, we’ve got to be booting it,” Henry said as he picked up his and Erika’s plates and took them to the waste disposal unit.

 

“We’re helping Nikola and Imogene this morning,” Erika explained, gathering up the computer tablet she had been working on and rising from her seat; her baby bump was just noticeable under her loose button-down shirt.

 

“Yeah,” Henry chuckled as he returned. “The Doc wants us to make sure _Count Chocula_ doesn’t blow up the place while he works out the feasibility of pursuing rift field generator technology as an alternate source of power.”

 

“Well, watch out for those tentacle monsters,” Will teased and Abby giggled as she remembered the story about the ravenous transdimensional creature that Nikola had attracted to their reality the last time he’d dabbled with rift technology. It had taken Henry as a snack, necessitating the vampire going through the rift and into the creature’s lair to rescue him.

 

Henry groaned. “ _Duude_ , don’t remind me!”

 

#


	8. Chapter 7 - April 6, 2012

_A mixer. Helen Magnus is throwing a mixer_ , Will thought for the umpteenth time as he watched his boss circulate among the department heads and various administrators with ease. Apparently, she threw these things every couple of months since the City has been up and running. It certainly was different from the Heads of House teleconferences that had been the staple of the old Sanctuary Network, although those virtual meetings still occurred on a smaller scale.

 

“She does that so effortlessly.” Imogene Worth’s voice came from behind him, echoing his thoughts.

 

Will smiled as he met her steady gaze. “That she does,” he replied. “She never ceases to surprise me—though why I continue to be surprised is the biggest surprise of all,” he admitted ruefully. “You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”

 

She laughed. “I’ve known her for over a hundred years—was raised by her—and I never got used to it.”

 

Will nodded and followed her gaze back to Helen, who was now listening attentively to Pili Ahmed, the former head of the Cairo Sanctuary and now head of Coordination and Logistics. The gentle hand she laid on the younger woman’s shoulder appeared comforting—almost _motherly_. Will realised that this was perhaps one of the most defining things about her.

 

He glanced again at Imogene; she certainly had benefited from that Magnus instinct to _mother_ people.

 

“I certainly couldn’t imagine growing up with Magnus during the early 20thCentury,” he probed gently.

 

She laughed. “Try to imagine growing up with two people who _always_ knew what was going to happen _before_ it happened—Helen moreso than John; apparently, he’d spent his first go-round lapsing in and out of sanity,” she replied. “But all in all, it was a rather good life, and they were good parents—considering I spent over twenty-five years as a hormonal adolescent,” she said chuckling at his surprise. “It was a side-effect of my father’s Praxian life-prolonging treatment. Truth be told, I wasn’t fit company for man or beast until at least the early 1930s.”

 

“Wow!” It was the only thing he could think of to say and she laughed again.

 

“I suppose they are rather _wow_ kind of people, now that I think about it,” Imogene said smiling indulgently. “But very few people ever think that their parents are remarkable—especially when they’re growing up. They’re just your parents; the people you run to when you’re hurt or scared or even when you’re unimaginably happy, they are the first people you want to tell.”

 

“Tell me about it,” Ashley said as she and Abby joined Will and Imogene. “ _Wow_ doesn’t even begin to describe it when you wake up from a total nightmare to find that your parents had not only gone back in time, but spent an entire _century_ planning your rescue,” she said in a quiet, infinitely loving tone that Will had never heard from the brash young woman before. He followed her gaze to Magnus again as she approached Druitt, Charlotte, Ranna and James.

 

He watched as Helen’s hand brushed against Charlotte’s in a loving gesture that seemed as intimate as a kiss. Will had expected to see a certain amount of jealousy in Druitt’s expression, but to his surprise, the tall man simply looked at his former lover and her _current_ lover with an amused expression and undeniable affection. No, the only one who seemed jealous was Nikola, who—with an ever-present wine glass in his hand—watched them from his position at the bar.

 

Imogene chuckled knowingly; she wore a definite smirk when he looked at her. “John and Helen have never been more than occasional lovers over the last century,” she said quietly. “I mean they—and John’s wife—were parents to me and my siblings as we grew up—”

 

“Wait a minute,” Will interrupted her in shock, “John’s _wife_?”

 

Ashley burst into a gale of giggles. “Oh yeah, shocked the hell out of me too,” she said sniggering. “I’ve now got a step-mom, who’s probably _centuries_ older than _my_ mom, and go from only having one adopted brother to having half an African country’s population of half-brothers and half-sisters, nieces and nephews, grand-nieces and grand-nephews—not to mention hundreds of adopted siblings—who are older than me!”

 

 _“Centuries older than Magnus?”_ Abby croaked in disbelief as Will did his guppy imitation.

 

Imogene laughed. “Mama Akandao is the Immortal Queen of Akandao Ganan, Africa,” she said. “We don’t actually know how old she is, but from the evidence so far, she may be at least eighteen centuries old … probably much, much older.”

 

“Source Blood?” Will rasped when he could get his voice to work again.

 

Imogene shook her head. “Nary a trace,” she replied, “She’s definitely _not_ a vampire.”

 

“Then how?”

 

“No clue,” Imogene said with a grin. “She is quite simply something _very_ different—literally the only one of her kind we’ve ever encountered … perhaps the _last_ of her kind. Her children are all boringly _Human_ —although most are empaths and telepaths. Most are also long-lived, although not extraordinarily so—the oldest living to be one hundred and ten—and all have quite robust immune systems. Every couple of years, dear Helen comes up with a theory, takes yet another couple of pints of blood to test—to the point where Mama Akandao has taken to calling her _Vampyra_ whenever she sees her coming.”

 

Ashley dissolved into a fit of contagious giggles; Will and Abby couldn’t help but laugh as well.

 

“I’ve never heard of a country called Akandao Ganan,” Will said at last, once he got his laughter under control.

 

“Very few people have,” Ashley said soberly. “You think this place is amazing? You should _see_ Akandao Ganan.”

 

As he stared at Ashley in confusion, Imogene said quietly, “You’ve never heard of it, because it is akin to Shangri’La, the Lost City of Atlantis, the Elysian Fields and Eden all rolled into one.”

 

“But we’ve heard of those places,” he protested. “They’re all just legends.”

 

Imogene shrugged. “It’s Africa,” she replied as if that explained anything. “Most Westerners pay little enough attention to Africa unless it affects their bottom line—and certainly little attention to myriad African cultures and mythos … all those cultures aren’t very easily _pop-culturized_. But if you must, think of it as King Solomon’s Mines and Tarzan’s City of Gold and Marvel’s Wakanda all rolled into one. In fact, it’s probably inspired some of the old stories of cities, hidden by ancient African magic.”

 

“Where is she—the Akandao?” Abby asked eagerly. “Is she here?”

 

“No,” Imogene replied almost wistfully. “She returned to Akandao Ganan when my sister Abiri, who has ruled in her stead for the past sixty years, died last year. Abiri’s granddaughter Amira, who succeeded her, is still a little unsure of herself, so Mama Akandao stayed to advise her—Papa goes to her every few days when he’s not needed here. And then there is also the Great Covenant between the Ganan and the People of the Akandao, which will come up for renewal in about eight months. Only the Akandao can enact it and bind the Ganan to the protection of Akandao … the Cradle Lands.”

 

“Cradle Lands?” Will asked curiously, pushing past the incongruity of someone calling Montague John Druitt _‘Papa’_.

 

“Africa isn’t known as the _Cradle of Humanity_ for no reason, Will,” Ashley said solemnly, blue eyes darkening before she turned a curiously fond gaze back to her mother, who now had Charlotte’s arms wound securely around her waist. “And if you ever go there, you will know _why_ instantly—it is literally the _Cradle_. Mom, Dad, Mama Akandao and Imogene spent the last century making sure that Akandao Ganan never made it onto the radar of the outside world.”

 

“I don’t get it,” Abby said in confusion. “How do you hide an entire country?”

 

“ _We_ don’t,” Imogene replied. “It was hidden long before Great Ziggurat of Babylon was raised to the sky … before the Great Pyramids were built … before Praxis was built beneath the surface of the Earth … apparently hidden by ancient _Gods_ who made the Vampire race look like petulant children.”

 

Will stared at her in shock and she shrugged indifferently as she returned her gaze to Helen.

 

“All we could do, as Mama—as Helen put it, was make sure to quietly erase any accidental tracks that made it into any modern databases or official public records,” she said quietly. “But outsiders have found it before. Generally, one or two adventurers will stumble across an entry gate every now and then, and the People of the Akandao could deal with them. But a few centuries ago, the slave trade ravaged a lot of places, Dr. Zimmerman, both seen and unseen. And then there was a close call a few years ago when an unscrupulous weapons dealer breeched the lands of the Ganan, looking for an ancient biological artifact he thought he could control—an artifact that the Ganan have protected for millions of years, and could have wiped out all life on Earth.”

 

 _“Millions of years?”_ Will asked in outrage. “I may not know much, Imogene, but even I know that modern Humans haven’t been around that long.”

 

Imogene and Ashley laughed. “Who says they’re _Human_ ,” Ashley said chuckling.

 

“Or modern,” Imogene continued. “The _Ganan_ are ancient beings, guardians of the Cradle long before our ancient _hominid_ ancestors began walking with their forelimbs off the ground.”

 

 _“My God,”_ Abby breathed and Will could only stare at the two women in shock.

 

“Why didn’t Magnus build the new Sanctuary there?” he asked at last. “Given how protected it is.”

 

Imogene shook her head. “Akandao Ganan could never absorb the population of Abnormals or even the relatively few numbers of Humans that the Sanctuary supports. You do realize that the population of Sanctuary City is over fifty thousand, don’t you?” she said; Will stared at her in shock. “Then there’s another fifteen thousand spread across the surviving Praxian enclaves and another two thousand of our people worldwide to run the safehouses—but most of those are Human or close enough humanoid variant species that they can pass for Human.”

 

“Right now, the population of Akandao Ganan is less than twenty thousand people,” Ashley explained quietly.

 

“And from what we understand of their history, fifty thousand is as large as it’s ever been,” Imogene continued, “it generally fluctuates between twenty to twenty-five thousand—falling precipitously to less than ten thousand a couple of hundred years ago during the slave trade. And even if Helen had thought to build Sanctuary City there, effectively more than quadroupling the population, both the Ganan and Mama Akandao would have quickly disabused her of that notion!”

 

“But … but how can they possibly hope to continue keeping it a secret?” Abby asked anxiously. “What about people leaving … or people entering—you’ve said that people have stumbled over it before—what about _Google satellite mapping_ , for God’s sake?”

 

“Oh, it’s a concern,” Imogene admitted quietly. “It’s one of the reasons we make sure there is little activity in that region that cannot be attributed to the peoples and nomadic tribes that live in the area—”

 

_“Stop!”_

 

They all stared at Abby in shock. “Stop, please  _God_ , don’t say anything more,” she pleaded tears running down her face. “Don’t say _anything_ else in front of me. Victor isn’t the one you should be suspicious of,” she whispered backing away from a confused Will. “He’s not the spy—I am. I’m a _Cabal_ spy.”

 

#


	9. Chapter 8

The room was painfully silent now and Will felt as if his heart would explode as he gaped at her. _“Abby?”_ he croaked; the hollow, broken voice didn’t sound like his own.

 

“I’m sorry Will, but they have my _parents!_ ”

 

“But your parents are safe in Indiana!” he blurted out, still unable to wrap his mind around her confession. “Magnus made sure when you came here.”

 

Her lips twisted into a bitter smile. “Yes, well they are and they aren’t,” she replied hoarsely.

 

“Abigail?” Magnus said with quiet authority. “Please explain.”

 

“Indiana cornfields aren’t all about wholesome corn-fed football jocks and perky cheerleaders,” she said swiping at her tears. “When the prized quarterback of Fairfield High, with a football scholarship to Indiana State University, married the pretty head cheerleader the summer after graduation, they weren’t just Homecoming King and Queen, but king and queen of the entire town. They were going to get out and make something of themselves. And when the quarterback blew out his knee at the end of his first season and had to come back to his daddy’s farm with nothing to show for it but a pregnant wife, well there are no marching bands or parades then for the Hometown King and Queen. In due time, the King’s father dies and the Kingdom passes to him, his mother having died years before. And for a little while, all is good—they’re relatively prosperous … a picture-perfect, All-American family with their little blonde Princess and a little Prince on the way.”

 

Abby’s voice hitched as she continued, holding Will’s gaze with those sad, cornflower-blue eyes. “Then the Queen loses the baby, her little Prince, and descends into a bottle of happier memories; and running a Kingdom is hard work, which leaves the King little time to re-hash old battles with old friends—the lesser kings and princes who never set foot out of their podunk little town. So, he takes that time and, well … the Kingdom will run itself. And by the time she’s five, the Little Blonde Princess has discovered that when she’s hurt or hungry or heartsick for just a few minutes in her Mama’s lap or a ride on her Daddy’s shoulder … she’s discovered that she can run away to the Crystal Cave hidden by the Misty Forest on the bank of Silver Moon Lake and be with her _Fairies_ … and they’ll take away the hurt and the hunger and the heartsickness.”

 

“Fairies?” Helen questioned now, clearly intrigued.

 

Abby shrugged. “It’s what I understood them to be when I was five years old,” she replied quietly. “A pair of magical Fairies who made all my pain go away, who took care of me and showed me more love than my parents _ever_ did. They became anything I needed—Elves to play hide and seek with in the High Elf Kingdom among the tops of the Misty Forest trees; Mermaids to frolic with in the lake and dive deep to discover the Lost City of Atlantis; Dwarves to explore all the treasures of the Crystal Cave and the hot, wild world beneath the surface of the Earth.

 

“I really don’t remember when they started looking like my parents—perhaps they always did—but they were always kind, always loving. Over time, they became the only ones to fill my empty belly … my empty soul … and take away the pain that was—more often than not—caused by my parents.”

 

 _“Oh … Abby,”_ Will husked, his heart breaking for her as she continued in that quiet, broken voice. He gathered her into his arms.

 

“And then, when I turned eleven, he came home drunk … came to my room …”

 

Will wanted to tell her to stop; he couldn’t bear to know that _this_  had happened to her, but all he could do was hold her, and bear witness to her pain.

 

“He said I was _old_ enough now. Said I was a woman. I screamed for my mother; she never came. And I knew … I’d _ruined_ her life, she’d told me often enough … and then I knew that she hated me enough to let him ruin _mine_. Afterward, I dragged myself down to the old duck pond—and I knew as soon as I saw it, there was no Silver Moon Lake … there was no Misty Forest or Crystal Cave. And there were no such things as _Fairies_.”

 

Her voice was muffled as she buried her face in Will’s chest. “Still, they came for me … in all their shifting, grotesque beauty … they came for me. They bathed me ... healed me, and like before, they tried to fill me with their love. But all I could feel then was hate, so they _became_ Hate … they became what I _needed_ them to be …”

 

“And what was that Abigail?” Magnus said softly.

 

 _“Killers,”_ Abby whispered. “I forced my _Fairies_ to become _killers._ And after the King’s and the Queen’s bodies were buried in Atlantis, I forced my Fairies to become my parents. And they were _good_ parents. Mama got rid of all the alcohol in the house, cleaned it up and baked me cookies … brushed my hair … cuddled me in her lap and sang me lullabies. I took Daddy to talk to the farm hands; he told them they were going to turn the farm around … make it prosperous again. He made old Mr. Ferris the foreman and had the other hands report to him. He made all the King’s old friends go away and used the time the King would have spent with them to teach me to ride my new pony … play with my new puppy … ride on his shoulder until I became too big to do so. And we were _so_ happy.”

 

“What happened to change that?” Magnus asked hoarsely. “How did the Cabal become involved?”

 

“My Fairies didn’t always live in the Crystal Cave and the Misty Forest and the Silver Moon Lake; they were born in a Cabal laboratory in Williamsport.”

 

 _“Dear God!”_ Will heard James Watson say as Abby continued to speak, her voice still so quiet and so broken.

 

“By the time they escaped, they were the only two left alive from a cohort of about three dozen genetically-enhanced, near-human _Magoi_ after the Cabal’s experiments to create the perfect infiltration agent blew up in their faces. Perfectly controllable agents who could make large numbers of people believe that a Magoi was whatever Human being their handlers wanted them to be.”

 

Will stared at Abby in horror; the Magoi were a humanoid shape-shifting species of telepaths that could—if they felt threatened—make a person believe that an individual Magoi was a friend, child, lover … anyone that would allow the Magoi to get close enough to kill the person. It was a formidable defense mechanism. However, that power usually worked only on individuals or small groups of people. They could also influence a person’s mind to make them do whatever a Magoi wanted—including killing themself.

 

“But neither my Fairies, nor I, understood about subcutaneous trackers that could pinpoint their location to within millimetres, or the patience of an ancient organization sowing long-term crops for harvest decades or even centuries down the road, or a Machiavellian scientist with sophisticated surveillance equipment, studying them as they bonded with a little girl who wanted nothing more than for _Fairies_ to be real … who wanted nothing from them but _love_ … until—until she needed them to _kill_.

 

“The Cabal studied us for a few years and during that time, my parents became known as rather strange, reclusive people. It wasn’t their fault; they could only react and interact with other adults as _I_ taught them to do. It took me a while to figure that out, and as a child, there was so much that I didn’t know … that I _couldn’t_ have known, and I made the mistake of envisioning them too young—the way my parents had been when I was five and they still loved me. But I was able to gradually fix that and was smart enough to go with them to the grocery store, help them pay the bills on time and even guide them through meetings with bank managers and insurance agents, while keeping everyone in Fairfield from being none the wiser. Still, it didn’t make people anymore comfortable around them and they had few friends—mostly just the farm hands and Old Man Ferris, who was half-blind to begin with,” she said with a soft, bitter laugh.

 

“However, when I was thirteen, the head scientist came to the conclusion that the only way for the Magoi to become the _tools_ the Cabal needed them to be, was for _me_ to become the _agent_ the Cabal needed to control them. So, they came to our farm and explained this to us in no uncertain terms—we could remain a family and relatively free, but our lives were no longer our own and I would follow the life and career path _they_ set out for me. They needed us to continue being a normal, All-American family, but I was going to become an FBI agent, not a singer or a teacher or a vetinarian—or any of those things little girls dream of being. Gradually, the Cabal replaced our farm hands with their agents, and eventually, Mr. Ferris was replaced with Agent Chesney who handled everything to do with the farm.

 

“And I grew up … an All-American cheerleader who went to the right college, studied law enforcement, went to Quantico and became an FBI agent—all perfectly legitimate and above-board—and when they needed my parents’ particular skills, I usually had enough clearance or skill to get them where they needed to go to complete their jobs and get them out again.”

 

“I see,” Magnus said grimly.

 

“I swear to you on my parents’ _lives_ , Dr. Magnus, I haven’t compromised Sanctuary City,” she pleaded; the desperation was palpable. “They’d already known everything about the old Sanctuary Network for decades—especially when you didn’t know they were there—because you had disclosed to the UN and many world governments, and the Cabal _were_ those governments in many cases. So, while you were under the radar to the majority of the mundane world, you weren’t exactly a secret. They didn’t _need_ me to be anything but what I appeared to be—Abigail Corrigan, a low rung FBI agent. And then the Praxian Crisis happened and you disappeared, and when you reappeared, you were so much more powerful and unpredictable than before. Then you pulled that stunt with Richard Feliz and shut down the stock exchanges, moved all that money—you really scared the _crap_ out of them.”

 

“How so?”

 

“Dr. Magnus, you not only disappeared _your_ money and assets, you disappeared some of _their_ assets as well—things they _thought_ were theirs, including something very important … something very _valuable_ to them,” Abby replied urgently.

 

“Do you know what it was?” Helen asked, eyes hard and calculating.

 

“No ma’am,” Abby said shaking her head. “I know this is going to sound like something out of one of Henry’s favourite movies, but from what Chesney thought, it had to do with a ring or a jewel of great power called the Great Eye, and some kind of map to a great treasure or power—Egyptian or Babylonian maybe … something really ancient—that’s all I could find out. But when I was working with Will to find you, I realized by their confusion about how you’d acquired it, it must be something you’d acquired as _Helen Bancroft_ or one of your other aliases as you lived through the 20th Century the second time—and they don’t know about Helen Bancroft or your time travelling, because I haven’t told them.”

 

“I see,” Magnus repeated.

 

“When you disappeared so thoroughly with all the Abnormals and then Will disappeared, they told me to get them the location of the new Sanctuary headquarters, or my parents were dead,” she husked, swiping at the tears that traced down her face. “My parents are at the end of their _usefulness_ to the Cabal; they can’t … they can’t retain their Human facades for more than a few hours anymore or for more than two or three people. Whatever the experiments did to them, it’s breaking down—they’re _dying_ , Dr. Magnus, and … and they’re in _pain_.”

 

“I see,” Magnus repeated again with an unfocused, inward-directed look; Will knew that she was lost in deep thought.

 

“Please, Dr. Magnus,” Abby begged, her voice heavy with desperation.

 

“Then I think we have a mission to prep—” the Sanctuary leader began.

 

“They gave me a tracker,” Abby continued urgently, gaining their undevided attention again. “It’s disassembled, so I could get it past your security—all the components look like something else. Once I was in the Sanctuary and settled, I was supposed to assemble it and broadcast my location. They’ll be expecting my signal soon,” she said hoarsely.

 

“How soon?” James asked eying her warily.

 

“Fifteen days from the time I disappeared.”

 

“And if you don’t give the signal?” Charlotte asked.

 

Abby’s tears streaked down her face again. “Then my parents are dead,” she replied. She looked around in despair. “Look, I know that they’re only Magoi—”

 

The effect of her words was immediate. Magnus stiffened, every muscle fibre unnaturally stilled for one eternal moment.

 

 _“Only Magoi,”_ Magnus said in obvious outrage. “ _Only Magoi?_ Abigail, they are your _parents_ and you love them—there is no _‘only Magoi’_ about it.” In one fluid movement, she was suddenly beside Abby, sweeping the young woman into a tight hug. She gently traced comforting circles on Abby’s back as the the distraught woman bawled out her fears. After a few minutes, Helen tilted Abby’s tear-stained face up to meet her gaze. “How can I _not_ help you rescue them? No, my dear girl, the only reason for my lapse into silence is that I was formulating a suitable plan.”

 

Abby nodded, sniffling as she moved out of Helen’s embrace. “Thank you,” she husked as Will moved to put his arms around her. She relaxed into him, allowing her head to rest against his shoulder.

 

“What’s the plan, Magnus?” Will asked, recognizing the almost feral look in his boss’ blue eyes now.

 

“The plan?” she repeated with a slow predatory smile. “Why, it’s very simple Will, we’re going to give the Cabal _exactly_ what it wants—a new Sanctuary.”

 

Will didn’t have to look around to know that his confusion was mirrored on the faces of his friends and colleagues.

 

“But to do so,” Magnus continued, “We’re going to have to burn one of our major bolt holes, so we will need an evacuation plan for its current residents and a rerouting plan for newly-found Abnormals worldwide through there over the next five days to really make this believable.”

 

Watson was the first to shrug off his shock; Helen was as paranoid about the security of her safe houses and enclaves as she was about Sanctuary City’s, so to suggest exposing one, rendered everyone speechless.

 

“Which safe house?” her old friend asked, already consulting his tablet.

 

“The most logical one, my friend,” she replied, “ _Old City_.”

 

#

 


	10. Chapter 9 - April 12, 2012

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't go to bed without posting this chapter - I think I've probably over-edited it enough! LOL!!!

Robert Hanover was tenth generation _Cabalis Nocturnum_ —eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son for over five centuries. The powers of the hereditary positions that top-level Operatives enjoyed were unparalleled, and the Hanovers were a select _Family_ in the highest echelons of that power. His father, Curtis, may no longer be an Operative—ostensibly retiring to run the family’s diamond mining operations in Botswana—but Robert knew that his father was also one of _The Nine Kings_ , whispered about in the halls of the Cabal; the nine-member Council that ran the _world_. And one day, so would _he_.

 

As the sun rose above the horizon, he looked out over the city of Williamsport through the panoramic glass windows of the Cabal tower, lips curling into a sneer; compared to other cities he’d lived in—London … Paris … Geneva … even New York—this provincial _town_ was hardly worthy of being called a _city_. But being named _Comptroller_ of one of only _six_ major Cabal facilities worldwide was certainly a coup.

 

Only six, out of the dozens of facilities scattered across the globe, were still left standing after Helen Magnus’ _mad dogs_ had finished with the Cabal in the aftermath of the whole _Whitcomb_ disaster with Ashley Magnus. Druitt and Tesla had even managed to kill two of the Nine Kings, during their extravagant slaughter of anyone they could find associated with the organization, which had made it possible for his father to ascend at least five years ahead of schedule.

 

Robert’s fist tightened in anger, even at the thought of it. His had been one of the few voices that had objected to then Director of Logistics and Operations Dana Whitcomb’s plan to use the Magnus girl as a weapon to destroy her mother’s Sanctuary Network, and the Abnormals that Helen Magnus had cared for over the last century. When Whitcomb’s asinine and overly complicated _plan_ had blown up in their faces, his dissention … his _reputation_ as one of the more rational, analytical minds in the organization had catapulted his career into the stratosphere. And if the Cabal leadership didn’t know how much he’d envied Whitcomb, when even his own father had praised her as a _visionary_ , all the better for him.

 

That he’d managed to get an Agent, not only into the Sanctuary, but attached to Magnus’ protégé, Will Zimmerman, was another coup; one that—if it played out in the way he’d envisioned—would further bolster his position as one of the most respected _young turks_ in the organization.

 

 _The Leaders of Tomorrow_ who would eventually take their places on the thrones of _The Nine Kings_.

 

The knock on the door was quiet and familiar. A social nicety, but one he appreciated, as it gave him time to gather his thoughts, before facing whatever it was that required his attention. His beautiful red-haired executive assistant, Jessica Kelly, entered carrying her tablet and carefully closed the door behind her.

 

“Yes, Jessica, what is it?”

 

“I’ve just had a call from Bergersen, sir,” she replied without preamble. “Corrigan’s signal has gone active.”

 

“Where?”

 

“Old City—McLaren’ team has confirmed it. You were right, sir, about Magnus having a second facility close-by to which she could quickly evacuate her headquarters. The surveillance team reported an increase in Abnormal activity in the city over the last week, including that Gorgon juvenile last seen in Naples, but they couldn’t pinpoint the new Sanctuary until Corrigan’s signal went up. According to the report, it appears to be underground, beneath an old, apparently abandoned, industrial park acquired about twenty years ago by TROY Construction, one of the contractors on the Old Bridge, before work stopped on it fifteen years ago—a lot of contractors lost their shirts when the project was abandoned, so there are quite a few similarly abandoned properties around Old City. I took the liberty of doing quick search; it, and about ten hectares of surrounding forest, are owned by a shell corporation belonging to one Titania Roy, who is headquartered on the island of Capri.”

 

“Has Magnus ever been associated with this Ms Roy?” he asked, taking the tablet and returning to his desk to bring up his database link.

 

“Not as far as I could determine, sir,” she replied, “she doesn’t appear on our watchlists, but the contact might have been made many years ago and been brief enough that our agents missed it—it could have even been made generations ago. As well, Magnus did own a vacation home on Capri; if you wish, I can send an agent to find out whether she still owns it, but like other Sanctuary properties, it may have been sold or transferred during the Wall Street Crisis. We’re still trying to trace all the transactions she made or set in motion during the Blackout. The agent could also investigate Ms Roy while he’s there.”

 

 _The Wall Street Crisis. The Blackout_.

 

Robert heard the unspoken capitalization everyone automatically used when referring to that dangerous woman’s engineering of a simultaneous blackout of not only the Wall Street stock exchanges, but every public stock exchange across the planet for twelve minutes. While, to most of the world, _Friday, December 23, 2011_ represented a frightening and unparalleled display of cyber-terrorism that had sent governments, banks, financiers and power brokers into a veritable tizzy of panicked security upgrades and public relations meltdowns, it had thrown those who participated on the world’s Shadow Exchanges into an even deeper quagmire of uncertainty. Magnus had stolen nearly a quarter of _their_ assets in just under the hour she had shut down the world’s Black Markets and their attendant exchanges.

 

Before they could even think to enact security measures, everyone from the Yakuza to the Sicilian Mafia, to that venerable old Russian organization, Vorovskoy Mir, to the Illuminati … and most importantly, _The Cabal_ , had lost a great deal of money, as well as old and valuable items, in Magnus’ raid.

 

Robert hadn’t lost as much as the other branches, but his most visible … most valuable loss had been the Morrigan; three powerful witch sisters from the Middle Ages that the Cabal had been keeping in an ancient form of cryogenic suspension. Magnus had found and freed them once before, but the Cabal had recaptured them, invading the Old City Sanctuary to do so, and they had put the woman squarely in her place. Too bad she didn’t take the hint to _stay_ there!

 

Worse, even now—months later—it was almost impossible to determine the full extent of what she’d stolen, as she had also stolen or simply erased the inventory lists when she’d diverted the assets, or in many cases, appeared to have spirited the items right out of their secure vaults. It was easy enough to do with a powerful teleporting Abnormal like Montague John Druitt at her side.

 

Except, she would have needed _dozens of Druitts_ to have accomplished the scope of what she had done within that hour—it was an idea that didn’t even bear _thinking_ about. He shuddered at the thought of more than one of those deadly teleporters free to roam the world; the only good thing to come out of Whitcomb’s unmitigated disaster—in addition to Ashley Magnus’ death—was Helen Magnus’ utter destruction of Ashley’s genetic graft-clones, something Abby Corrigan had been able to verify unequivocally. Magnus had taken the only other teleporters out of the picture quite _permanently_.

 

However, as his lovely Jessica had suggested recently, Magnus may have been far more aware of the Cabal than they’d thought and much earlier than they’d realized, as there were now doubts about whether the Cabal had even _owned_ , in the first place, some of the things they’d determined she had spirited away quite _literally_ out from under their noses.

 

As they’d set about tracing the provenance of the stolen items and the Cabal agents who’d acquired them, they’d found the disturbing trend that most of those men and women, as well as their families, if they hadn’t died during the intervening years since they’d acquired said items, had simply disappeared as thoroughly as the items they’d ostensibly bought for the Cabal. Many had disappeared, from disparate locations across the world, within the _week_ prior to _The Crisis_.

 

If Magnus had indeed infiltrated them so deeply, and for so long, it was imperative that they find her and recover their property. He’d never believed that she had died when her headquarters in Old City was blown up—Zimmerman’s disappearance was indicative enough of that—and now, Corrigan had again delivered proof.

 

“Status of the Corrigan Magoi?”

 

“Still in ice-stasis,” Jessica replied. “Oxana Jablonska is again asking permission to bring a team to harvest tissue samples for her experiments—or even take the specimens back to the Marseilles facility.”

 

“Hold the good doctor off until we’ve recovered the Corrigan asset,” he ordered studying Titania Roy’s information on his screen. “We may still need them to control her. The file on Roy is innocuous enough that it may be a Magnus alias or, most likely, one of her agents. It’s difficult to tell without further data,” he said, frustration evident. “Send Dimitrios to Capri—he’s currently in Belgium and is my best agent who is familiar with the Mediterranean area.”

 

She nodded and murmured, “Very good, sir,” as he continued.

 

“As well, each previous city that hosted a Sanctuary should be searched again for fall-back Sanctuaries like this one—coordinate with HQ to make it happen. I want the Old City surveillance team deployed to keep tabs on any Abnormals or any of Magnus’ people active in the area until I get there with Bergersen and his breaching teams. No one is to make a move _near_ this new Sanctuary until I _personally_ give the order.”

 

“The plane will be prepped and ready to go by the time you get to the hangar,” she said briskly as he rose to leave. “Bergersen and his boys will meet you there, along with Masterson’s tech team. I’ve set up a teleconference with the Leadership, via secure satellite link, at 10:00 AM. I’ll send the information package to you within the hour and to everyone half an hour later. Let me know immediately if anything needs changing.”

 

“I’m sure it will be fine, Jessica,” he replied fondly. “It always is.”

 

She smiled brilliantly. “Thank you, sir.”

 

#

 


	11. Chapter 10

Meghan McLaren _hated_ Abraham Bergersen; it was a fact that she’d lived with for the last ten years, when he’d taken it upon himself to introduce her personally to one of the _perks_ of becoming a Cabal agent. She could still remember the frightened eyes of the Abnormal boy as Bergersen turned him loose for _the Hunt_ ; she could still remember the stench of his fear and desperation.

 

And she could still remember Bergersen’s laughter when she’d emptied her stomach after the Abnormal bio-armoured Hell Hounds had torn the boy apart not thirty minutes later; “ _animals eating animals”_ he’d laughed, and declared _her_ in one chauvinistic pronouncement, _“a pussy, unfit for anything but being pussy, and if we’re desperate, surveillance.”_

 

And so, that is where she’d been put; whether it had been Robert Hanover’s decision, she didn’t know, nor did she care. She would be surprised if her hiring had even reached the level of the entitled, snot-nosed _Princeling_ he’d been then, and doubted that she had ever crossed Hanover’s mind since the decision had been made.

 

After a few years, she’d found that she didn’t mind being in Surveillance, but she also knew that she would never climb much higher in the organisation because of it. She was a dime-a-dozen, competent, but not really a standout in any way. And really, she didn’t mind; she was probably safer that way—or as safe as anyone could be in a place like this. Still, it rankled, since she knew she was ten times better than that blowhard. But, with the White Queen’s epic _cock-up_ , it would probably be another _century_ before the _Kings_ let a mere _woman_ into any high Cabal leadership position again.

 

Now, Bergersen was giving orders, deploying his teams; ignoring her team and her advice. So, she attempted to appeal to Hanover.

 

“Sir, this seems to be a little too pat … too convenient. Something about this seems off— _wrong_. Magnus would never allow a Sanctuary to be so exposed. Sir, there isn’t even a _hint_ of an electromagnetic shield.”

 

Bergersen glowered at her. “She’s probably hoping to protect it through sheer obscurity, Rob,” he said forcefully. “After all, before today we didn’t even have the first clue this was here, or that Magnus’ agent, Titania Roy, even existed.”

 

 _“Titania Roy?”_ Meghan said, gaping at both men in disbelief as realisation struck. “My God, _TROY_ Construction?”

 

“Yeah, what are you yammering about?” Bergersen growled impatiently, concentrating more on his Bluetooth earpiece than on her.

 

“Don’t you get it?” she said, barely containing her anger at the idiot. “Titania Roy isn’t some Magnus agent—it’s Magnus herself! _Helen of Troy!_ ”

 

“Well, _la-dee-dah!_ ” he sneered, pushing past her. “Get the _fuck_ out of my way! It really doesn’t matter—we’ve got her Robert! We’ve just confirmed sighting of Magnus, Druitt, Zimmerman, Corrigan and that soldier-boy she disappeared with.”

 

He handed Hanover his tablet; sure enough, there was Magnus—gun trained on Zimmerman and the others, a menacing Druitt at her side—while her protégé argued wildly with her as Corrigan clung to him, like some damsel in a fourth-rate soap opera.

 

“Apparently, Magnus is kicking all of them out,” the idiot crowed. “She’s just ordered Druitt to teleport them to different prisons around the globe, unless they tell her which of them brought the tracker into the Sanctuary.”

 

Hanover nodded, greed gleaming in his eyes as he studied the surveillance. “You have a go, Abe,” he said and the other man grinned in triumph as he turned away barking orders into his microphone.

 

“All right Masterson, turn on the EM field projectors; I don’t want Druitt spiriting anyone away! Team 1—with me, we’re going in hot. Hit fast, hit hard! Teams 2 and 3, close on my mark!”

 

As Bergersen and his teams moved in on the compound, Meghan quickly signalled Oliver Olatunde, her second in command, to order their surveillance team members break off assignments and move to the established fall-back positions as fast as possible, especially those out following Abnormals in Old City. She was _not_ going to let her people fall prey to whatever traps Helen Magnus had set for these assholes; that woman liked blowing _shit_ up entirely too much!

 

At the last moment, she decided to take a chance and grabbed Robert Hanover’s arm as he started forward to follow Bergersen.

 

“Sir, I don’t mean to be rude or insubordinate, but I suggest you fall back with my team. In my opinion, this is a _trap_ , and it’s our duty to protect you.” She nodded to Olatunde, who helped her herd the man back to the protection of the vehicles.

 

“Who the _hell_ do you think you are?” Hanover demanded, yanking his hand from her grasp, clearly on the verge of losing his _shit_.

 

“You’ve had me here watching Magnus since before she blew up her _damned_ house, sir,” she said manoeuvring him behind the SUVs. “I know that woman, and what you just saw on that screen was all just theatre to suck us in—to suck Bergersen and his teams in.”

 

For the first time, she saw uncertainty register in Hanover’s grey eyes. “What do you mean?”

 

“I mean, you’ve got to stop this and order them to retreat right now!” she said urgently—but keeping it professional; the last thing she needed attached to her name was _‘hysterical female’_. “More than simple theatre, this tells me that Magnus knows far more about the organisation that we gave her credit for—she knows that you’re known informally among the Cabal hierarchy as _Robin Goodfellow_ , the heir to _King Oberon_ —and she’s cast herself as bloody _Queen Titania_ , sir!”

 

She saw his eyes widen as he got it at last, just as a massive wave of … _something_ … hit them and her every nerve sang as if it was on fire. She automatically pinned him to the SUV, shielding his body with hers, while Olatunde did the same on his other side. Many of her team maintained their presence of mind enough to maintain positions surrounding them—weapons at the ready—although some fell to their knees in obvious pain.

 

She could hear Hanover gibbering a garbled _“Oh God!”_ over and over as her own nausea ratcheted up in intensity, and she prayed he wasn’t going to spew chunks all over her for her pains. The concussion waves of the explosions, when they rolled over her in rapid succession, were almost anticlimactic; she’d expected them. And with those expectations, came the screams of men and women on fire.

 

As she moved away from him to survey Magnus’ killing field, she heard him choke on the smoke, the stench of burning flesh, and his own words.

 

_“H-How did you know?”_

 

“I didn’t,” she replied as the surveillance and tech team members rushed forward to help those who’d been far enough from the explosions to _require_ help. The rest of the bodies would be sanitized of anything Cabal and left for the local authorities to find. “I didn’t start to put it together until Bergersen said the name of the woman who bought this place.”

 

“That first blast was a massive electromagnetic pulse, Meghan, of a magnitude like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” Olatunde reported.

 

“To take down the EM field projectors and cripple our tech—slow us down,” she said, holding Hanover’s stricken gaze.

 

“Yes, they are completely fried. I’ve ordered the Tech Team to gather and pack up everything, including what they take off the dead—the vehicles’ and other back-up power systems should be online momentarily. Any other equipment not consumed in the blasts, we’ll auto-destruct in ten minutes; local law enforcement should be here inside of twenty.”

 

“Thanks Oliver, I suggest we expedite—coordinate with Masterson to sanitise and secure everything. We move in eight.”

 

The big African nodded and hurried over to the small red-haired tech chief.

 

“By whose authority are you giving these orders, Ms McLaren?” the Cabal Prince thundered. “We need to see—”

 

“By yours, sir,” she replied evenly. “We have to get out of here _now_ , Mr. Hanover. There is nothing to salvage here. This has been nothing but a _diversion_ for Magnus.”

 

“A diversion?”

 

“Yes, sir, and we need to get back to the plane ASAP.”

 

But she could see that he still wasn’t getting it and wondered now about his reputation. This was the first time that she’d dealt with him for any length of time without anyone to spoon-feed him his own _thoughts_ and prop him up—she now realised that even _Bergersen_ had made him look good—and a mental giant he definitely was not. His _secretary_ would probably know more about what was going on here than he did.

 

 _His secretary_. With sudden clarity, she saw it, and almost laughed at the cliché; _behind every great man, indeed_. If she played this right, she could be more than an _acquaintance_ of that great woman. Perhaps the shrewd Ms Kelly wouldn’t mind another woman beside her, while she played _Kingmaker_ to the Cabal Prince, because Meghan sensed that trying to sneak up _behind_ Jessica Kelly would be a very _dangerous_ thing to do. Hanover was her boy, and depending on how this debacle went, Ms Kelly could take him far—farther than far— _with Meghan’s help_.

 

“Sir, what was the thing that Titania and Oberon were fighting about in _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_? What was it that Oberon and Robin Goodfellow humiliated Queen Titania over?”

 

“The Changeling,” he whispered in shock.

 

“And if I understand my briefing on Ms Corrigan correctly, the creatures you had posing as her parents—the things you used to control her—are essentially _changelings_.”

 

“ _Shit!_ They’re going after the Williamsport facility!” he shouted in a panicked voice as Magnus’ plan dawned on him at last.

 

“That would be my guess, sir,” Meghan replied pointing to the roaring conflagration painting the sky with flames and smoke. “And I’d also hazard a guess that Corrigan hasn’t been ours for quite some time, and she’s given Magnus even more reasons to burn as much of the Cabal to the ground as possible. That’s why we need to get back to the plane and get in touch with Williamsport as quickly as possible.”

 

“No can do, McLaren,” Masterson said as he and Olatunde jogged over to them. “The plane’s been destroyed—Druitt was identified as leading a small team there—and Williamsport has already been hit.” Hanover looked like a man who had been shot in the gut, as he began to realise how badly Magnus had sucker punched him.

 

“The Williamsport facility and the Corrigan Farm have been burnt to the ground,” Olatunde reported. “According to Ms Kelly, they even found two of our remaining server facilities.”

 

“Jessica is alive?” Hanover croaked desperately.

 

“Yes, sir,” he replied and gestured impatiently for Masterson to give the shielded satellite phone to their boss. “By chance, Ms Kelly had already left the office to investigate problems at the satellite control facility, as it appeared to be experiencing intermittent signal problems.”

 

Hanover snatched the phone from the tech chief, like a man grabbing a life-preserver.

 

“Jessica! You’re okay?” the man almost cried with relief as he sagged against an SUV. “Oh, thank God!”

 

“They apparently even spiked the operations satellite uplink, just about the time it all went to hell here,” Olatunde continued his report. “It may have been destroyed—and if it hasn’t been, God help us if they’ve taken control of it. The hits were all virtually simultaneous, but they hit _Williamsport_ first. Ms Kelly just managed to transfer to the emergency communications link. HQ is baying for blood.”

 

“Damn,” she muttered; this was one _epic_ _cock-up_ , but at least it was not her mess. “Are we ready to move out?” He nodded. “All right, everyone into the vehicles. Pass the word; we’ll head to the beta site while everything gets sorted and we wait for new orders.”

 

“Understood,” was all he said as he moved off to complete her directives.

 

“Jessica wants to speak with you, Ms McLaren,” Hanover said quietly, handing the phone to her.

 

“McLaren here. What can I do for you, Ms Kelly?”

 

“I wanted to thank you, Ms McLaren, for saving Mr. Hanover’s life,” an Irish-accented soprano said without preamble.

 

“You’re welcome, Ms Kelly,” she replied. “Just doing my duty. I’m just sorry I didn’t figure out it was a trap in time.”

 

“I didn’t figure it out either. No one did, except you, Ms McLaren; you know Magnus and that’s why I need you here with Mr. Hanover as soon as possible,” she said to Meghan’s immense surprise. “Do I make myself clear, Ms McLaren?”

 

“Yes, ma’am,” she replied. _Damn, this woman was sharp!_

 

“Good. Now, head for Helmann Field just east of New City,” she instructed. “I’ll have a charter ready and prepped to leave when you get there.”

 

“Understood, we’ll leave immediately. Thank you, Ms Kelly; I’ll give you back to Mr. Hanover now.”

 

Handing the phone back to Hanover, she ushered him into the armoured SUV’s and directed everyone to head for Helmann. She ordered Olatunde and Bates to flank Hanover in the back seat—they couldn’t afford to lose him, but she got the feeling that Magnus wouldn’t come after them. Cold-blooded murder wasn’t her way, especially if her quarry was busy running away with his tail tucked securely between his legs. But take a step towards her or her own, and Helen Magnus had _no_ qualms about putting a bullet between your eyes.

 

Climbing into the passenger seat, she nodded to the driver, who joined the queue of vehicles leaving Magnus’ killing field. In the distance, she heard the wail of sirens coming down from Old City as they drove onto the highway bypass that would skirt south of the conjoined cities and take them to the air field.

 

As the fire and smoke receded in the distance, Meghan McLaren mentally tipped her hat to Helen Magnus on her _Oscar_ -worthy performance, but she was _glad_ to be leaving.

 

#

 


	12. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry - belated - Christmas and felicitations for the New Year! Been re-reading Pride and Prejudice and I just love old words; it's a pity that one has fallen out of everyday use. My youngest sister just looked at me as if I've gone completely mad! LOL!!!
> 
> Just a short one that I've been working on to finish and edit. Enjoy!

Bringing down the lone Cabal soldier—who stepped out into the side corridor—with two shots, Will Zimmerman clutched his gun, constantly scanning the rear approaches as he and Abby followed Magnus through the facility at Williamsport, Indiana. Although both took out any targets that got close, they kept well back and out of the way of the controlled chaos ahead as the Sanctuary strike teams mowed down the last of the Cabal’s security. Ashley and her Valkyrie team took point, sweeping offices and corridors in a graceful ballet of weapons’ fire and hand-to-hand combat.

 

 _Death’s Ballerinas_ was what Henry’s wife Erika had called them while watching one of the training sessions earlier in the week. With the close-fitting black armour made of anti-ballistic material, festooned with weapons and gadgets, and the exquisitely-decorated masks and helmets Ashley’s team chose to wear, they’d moved about the training room like lithe, deadly dancers, acquiring and hitting their targets with preternatural speed. Ashley leads her all-female team under the call-sign Kara, while her team members answered to Mist, Sigrun, Olrun, while her twin half-sisters are Hildr and Herja.

 

Two rescued Cabal test-subjects also lead strike teams; Athena Liu Xiaomei is a Gorgon who leads Dragon team, while Andrei Vasilievich Kudriga is a Siberian Folding Man, who is able to shift or collapse his skeleton at will, and leads the Amba (Tiger) team. Three of Ashley’s half-brothers, Beyoun, Odolowe and Jorren, and one half-sister, N’Tirra, also lead teams Beyolo Awokan (Ancient or Ancestor Warrior), Solganba (Gorilla), Deraku (Serpent) and M’gobu (Cheetah) respectively. The Akandao warriors are trained to fight low-lifes looking to exploit Abnormals, and all have inherited Druitt’s teleporting ability.

 

There are also two teams of Hollow Earth Abnormals; Basilisk and Roga—so named for one of their great warriors of antiquity. But the team lead that surprised Will the most was Beatrix Kennair, who had been one of six orphans experimented on in an early 80s genetic engineering program that Magnus had shut down when it skated too close to _eugenics_ experimentation. Ms Kennair had been targeted for the Cabal’s super-abnormal program and was the only one of the orphans that Magnus had managed to save from that fate. An Olympic-calibre equestrienne, expert swordswoman and all-around athlete, she’d jumped at the opportunity to join the new Sanctuary, when _this_ Magnus had presented it to her, and now led Amazon Team under the call-sign Hippolyte, or more commonly Polly.

 

“According to Henry’s download of their systems, the temperature-controlled laboratory should be straight ahead on this level,” Helen said glancing at her tablet, but keeping her gun ready for any engagement—not that there was much, as Ashley and her Valkyries made short work of _anyone_ who pointed a weapon in her mother’s direction, while Dragon Team acted as a living, and ever-shifting, shield of bodyguards as the group proceeded down the corridor. “Status update, Medusa,” she murmured into her comm.

 

“Beyolo and Amazon teams have secured the Corrigan Farm,” the Gorgon leader of Dragon team reported, her voice soft and musical in Will’s earbud. “Hippolyte reports that they are currently setting charges—five minutes to detonation. Roga and M’gobu teams have taken the server farms and the downloads are complete; Betade reports that their farm’s already burning, while N’Tirra estimates three minutes to finish setting charges and detonation. There are still pockets of resistance at the satellite control facility, but Solganba and Basilisk have it well in hand—Imogene and Nikola are optimistic that their team will get control of the communications satellite in time, but if not, they’re ready to destroy it. Amba team has all entry points into this building locked down, but The Tunguska suggests we expedite pronto, as his and Odolowe’s S&R teams have rescued thirty-one Abnormals being held or actively experimented on in the labs here—most are in bad shape and need medical attention.”

 

“Tell them to begin evacuation of the survivors to Bolt Hole One,” Helen ordered as they reached the cryo-lab, and Ashley gave the “all clear”.

 

“Understood,” Medusa replied and relayed her orders as Will and Abby entered the lab with Magnus. He was grateful for the high-tech, insulated, anti-ballistic armour they wore—which was similar to strike teams’ armour—but it was bitterly cold in the room.

 

“We have five Magoi on ice here,” one of the Valkyries reported.

 

Abby raced over to her. Wiping the ice on each block, she quickly identified her parents, and members of Gorgon Team quickly transferred the blocks into temperature controlled _“body-bags”_ for transport.

 

“I don’t know who the other three are,” Abby said anxiously.

 

“Bag them all for transport to the Bolt Hole; Valkyries, get them out of here as soon as each bag is sealed and then come back for the rest of us,” Magnus ordered decisively before turning back to Abby. “Perhaps your parents will be able to communicate with them when they’re thawed—help them to understand that we mean them no harm.”

 

“Thank you,” Abby replied gratefully. Will reached for her hand, squeezing it gently; despite the main objective of this mission and Magnus’ repeated assurances that her parents were welcome at the Sanctuary, she remained anxious, given how innately hostile wild Magoi are towards Humans or anyone they perceive to be a threat to them.

 

A flicker of movement in a shadowed corner caught Will’s attention; his eyes almost slid over it, when there was another flicker.

 

“Uh … guys,” he said warily, not taking his gaze off the figure that resolved itself before him, like a photograph developing. It was a woman of Indian or Middle Eastern descent, perhaps forty or fifty… perhaps younger—it’s difficult to tell; the pain and fear etched on her face seemed to age her as she tried disappear into the shadows again. Her right arm was missing, mid-way through the humerus above the elbow, and her left eye was gone.

 

He knelt and holstered his gun before offering his hand to her. “It’s all right,” he said gently. “We won’t harm you; we’re here to rescue you and the others being held here. My name is Dr. Will Zimmerman. Do you understand me?”

 

After a beat, she nodded fearfully.

 

“Will you come with us?” Again, she nodded, but made no effort to leave her corner. “Can you tell us your name?”

 

Tears traced their way down her face from her lone eye and she opened her mouth wide. It took a long minute of staring into her mouth for Will to understand what was wrong with it; _her tongue was missing_.

 

 _“Oh God!”_ Abby cried out behind him.

 

Suddenly, Magnus was there, kneeling beside the woman and handing her the tablet. The woman looked down at it; there was gratitude in her single eye when she looked up again.

 

“I am Dr. Helen Magnus.”

 

“Mira,” the tinny, uninflected voice from the tablet responded, as her fingers flowed over the touchscreen keyboard.

 

“Can you walk, Mira?” Helen asked urgently. “We’re about to blow up this facility, so we need to get moving right away.”

 

“Yes,” came the mechanical reply; she rapidly tapped at the device again. “But my arm is in unit there. Took it a few hours ago. Should be easy to reattach.”

 

“Medusa?”

 

“Affirmative, Dr. Magnus,” the Gorgon replied. “There is an arm suspended in a nutrient solution in this unit. But there are also a couple of legs and organs—including two hearts—and, Dr. Magnus, if I’m reading the display correctly, they all come from the same subject!” she gasped, her outrage and confusion written large upon her expressive face.

 

Magnus looked back at Mira in horror, who smiled sadly at her. “Only need arm,” the mechanical voice continued dispassionately. “Don’t need more than two legs. Could regenerate arm, but reattachment easier, faster. Wound still fresh. Eye long gone, but better to regenerate. Less painful. Tongue back in two weeks. Cut out each time. No tongue, no words.”

 

“Magnus?” Will said, horror wriggling like worms into his consciousness.

 

“Mira is a living organ and tissue donor, Will,” Magnus said hoarsely as she helped the woman to stand. “My guess is that she regenerates quickly and is immunologically compatible across a spectrum of genotypes. Medusa, take the unit with the arm, then burn the rest—reduce this place to ash! Will, Abby, form up on us.”

 

Will rose quickly and moved to stand beside Mira, with Abby on his other side.

 

“Valkyries, get us the _hell_ out of here!” Magnus snarled.

 

While Ashley wrapped her arms around her mother and the wounded woman, the twins moved in to each link arms with Will and Abby. Over Ashley’s shoulder, Mira’s mouth opened wide in a croaking, wordless cry as the world disappeared.

 

#

 


	13. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long hiatus, but between work and other real life issues, it's been a little difficult to find time for writing, and when I do, more often than not, my Star Trek: Discovery story pushes it way to the fore. LOL! To anyone still reading, enjoy this next part.

Mira was screaming an unholy sound and flailing hysterically at Magnus when Will and Abby materialised in the cavernous subterranean room beneath a sprawling mansion in Kent, England. _Sanctuary Bolt Hole One_.

 

Magnus absorbed her uncoordinated blows, speaking gently to the terrified woman, in an attempt to calm her, while Dr. Schell prepped a needle.

 

“I know it’s frightening, Mira, to be suddenly flung half-way around the world in an instant, but like you have amazing powers of regeneration, my daughter Ashley, and her siblings, have amazing abilities of their own,” Magnus explained, gesturing to Ashley, who removed her helmet and nodded to the frightened woman. “Among those powers is the ability to _teleport_ almost instantaneously from one place to the next, which she inherited from her father.”

 

Mira whimpered piteously, her one hand clamped tightly to Helen’s forearm as Schell and Charlotte moved closer to them.

 

“Now, are you able to remain calm, or should I have my friend, Eleanor—Dr. Schell—administer a mild sedative? It won’t put you to sleep, but help you to remain calm while we tend to you and our other patients.”

 

The woman finally seemed to notice the numerous other people around her—some are wounded, others are catatonic, while still others are like her, given to hysteria at their sudden relocation.

 

Mira gulped for air, nodding, and gestured to the tablet Helen still carried; Helen kept it steady while she hastily tapped out a response on the touch screen.

 

“I’m fine now. I’ll be good. Besides, sedatives don’t work well for me unless large doses, which interferes with my regenerative abilities. My captors did not want my flesh adulterated when transferred to clients, so I learned to endure my surgeries without any.”

 

Will’s nausea rose with bile rising in his throat, and he heard more than one person retching. Abby stumbled away from his embrace towards the medic looking after the Magoi in their stasis bags, angrily swiping at her tear-stained face.

 

Even Helen was visibly affected by this horrific statement.

 

“There is no need to _be good_ , Mira,” Charlotte husked in a sorrow-filled voice as she moved to stand next to the wounded woman. “You have a _right_ to be frightened—please don’t think that we would be angry with you for that. But we have other patients to tend to and make sure they’re stable enough for transport to our main facility. Will you allow us to help you?”

 

There was gratitude in Mira’s single eye as she regarded Charlotte. “Yes. Thank you.”

 

“I’m going to help you get settled into one of these portable beds,” Charlotte explained, guiding her over to one of the armchairs a nurse deftly pulled out into a narrow recliner bed the size of cot. “Then we can get you something to eat and drink.”

 

The woman gestured for the tablet, which Helen handed to her; she painstakingly tapped out her response. “First, please set me up so that unit with my arm is on stable surface. There is collar on severed end—attach it to my stump to hold it in place. Once done, remove nano-pore barrier covering the severed end. My flesh knows my body—healing process will begin quickly. They will knit back together. I will probably need to keep healing arm in nutrient bath of holding unit for a couple of hours. You may then set me up on intravenous nutrients. Any food should be liquid until my tongue regenerates. But glass of cold water would be wonderful on my throat right now.”

 

As Magnus, Medusa and Schell busied themselves setting up the bio-storage unit on a low table next to Mira’s cot, Charlotte brought her a water bottle with a flip-top and embedded straw.

 

A few moments later, Henry hurried in with another techy-looking young man and a tall, slim brunette following in his wake; a young woman, in her late twenties or early thirties, who resembled Magnus a little.

 

“Hold up Doc!” Henry called, pulling the breathless young man forward. “There’s a security measure on that unit Pryce needs to deactivate before you try anything.”

 

“Security measure?” Medusa said frowning. “I’m sure I cleared all of those before I disconnected the unit.”

 

“Back-up,” Pryce gasped, visibly fighting to catch his breath; he looked hardly old enough to be out of high school. “Needs to be cleared before opening—just need to access the backdoor—designed the failsafe myself to scuttle the unit if stolen.”

 

“You designed a cryo-storage unit for the Cabal?” Abby demanded, moving from checking her parents’ temperature-controlled transport bags back to Will’s side; there was confusion and definite anger in her tone.

 

“I designed a cryo-storage system—complete with security measures to prevent theft of body parts for sale on the black market—for _Duchesne-Morgan Bio-Medical_ , of which this was just one component,” he said distractedly as he hooked his tablet up to the unit, “five years ago … before I came to work for _milady_ here.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the brunette, who pursed her lips as Magnus chuckled.

 

“Abby, Will, I’d like you to meet Lady Melora Heathering-Kanu, Countess Bancroft, a dear friend and distant cousin on my mother’s side.”

 

“Lady Bancroft,” Will said, nodding politely and Abby followed suit.

 

The woman gave them each a perfunctory nod in return. “Dr. Zimmerman, Ms Corrigan, it’s good to meet you both at last; Helen has told me much about you.”

 

Will gave her a wry smile. “That’s good to know, because she’s told us … well, absolutely _nothing_ about you, Lady Bancroft,” he quipped; Magnus rolled her eyes.

 

“Yes, well that’s Helen for you,” she replied smiling.

 

“Oh, I remember your voice!” Abby yelped. “This was the safehouse we passed through when Ashley and John transported Victor and me to the Sanctuary. You told Ashley to remind Dr. Magnus that your boys were waiting for their tour.”

 

“That is correct, Ms Corrigan,” she chuckled.

 

“And Kanu, Mal and I are _still_ waiting,” the young man groused.

 

Helen held up her hands in mock surrender. “All right!” she laughed. “Whenever you’re ready, we will be more than happy to accommodate you.”

 

“Milady?” Pryce asked, eyes twinkling as he disengaged his tablet from the unit.

 

Lady Bancroft chuckled. “Well we don’t have anything pressing for the next few weeks,” she observed. “Kanu and I can hold down the fort for the next two weeks, then take a short vacation to the Sanctuary once you boys return.”

 

“Kanu?” Abby asked curiously.

 

“My husband, Ms Corrigan,” Lady Bancroft supplied. “Mr. Kanu Ojukwu, and Mal is my chief of security, Colonel Malcolm Mallory, and Pryce’s husband.”

 

“All done, Dr. Magnus, Ms Mira,” Pryce said triggering the unit open.

 

As Charlotte and Medusa busied themselves reattaching Mira’s arm via the silver metal collar at the cut end, the nurse returned carrying a tray with a green protein shake in a large bottle with a straw sticking out, as well as an intravenous bag. Handing the shake to Mira, she deftly balanced the tray as she assembled the cot’s collapsible IV stand before hooking up the bag.

 

“I’ll have a tablet programmed with adaptive language and conversation software, ready for you by tomorrow, Ms Mira,” Henry said looking up from his own device.

 

The woman looked surprised—no absolutely _flabbergasted_ —by Henry’s statement. As gratitude shone in her tear-filled gaze, Will realised that she probably hadn’t been shown any kindness or consideration for a very _long_ time.

 

“The Sanctuary is home to _many_ different types of beings, including many non-verbal or non-vocal sentients,” Helen said gently, kneeling beside Mira’s cot and taking her hand. “For those able to comprehend and use them, Henry’s tablets are a vital lifeline to making their thoughts and wishes understood.” She tapped the frame of the tablet lying in Mira’s lap. “This is no less than your _right_ , Mira, to be able convey _your_ thoughts,  _your_ feelings and _your_ words; and we will fight for you to always have that from now on—I _promise_ you that.”

 

“’Hank ’ou,” came the soft croaking reply.

 

“You are very welcome,” Magnus replied rising and turning to Lady Bancroft. “Melora, may I use your system to call the Sanctuary? I need to speak to James and Ranna.”

 

“Of course, Helen,” the other woman replied.

 

“Mira,” Helen continued. “Charlotte—Dr. Benoit—will take care of you until you’re ready for transport to the Sanctuary.” Mira nodded and smiled up at Charlotte as Magnus turned her attention to Will and Abby. “You two, get ready to transport with Abby’s parents and the others—get them settled in the habitat that’s been prepared for them, and I’ll have James and Jono oversee their revival from stasis with you, Abby. Place the other Magoi in one of the adjacent habitats in that sector, but make sure that they remain in stasis until your parents have awakened, Abby, and are cognisant of the help we’ll require from them in communicating with these individuals.”

 

“Understood, Dr. Magnus,” Abby said smartly. “I’ll explain it to them as soon as they are awake.”

 

“You are a Shifter Guardian, Ms Corrigan?” queried the artificial voice from Mira’s tablet; they all turned to the wounded woman in confusion. “You do not feel like one to me.”

 

“Shifter Guardian?” Magnus asked, kneeling beside the woman again; she appeared calm, but Will could see the excitement flashing in her blue eyes as Mira tapped out her reply.

 

“You said her parents were Magoi—did you mean the _Gamagoi_ , the shapeshifting guardians from what is called the Himalayas?”

 

“Guardians—you mean they’re meant to be _guardians_?” Magnus asked breathlessly. “Of what? Of whom?”

 

Mira pulled back visibly, looking wildly from Magnus to Abby before tapping out. “How can you not know? How can she not know? Is that why she continues to hold Human form? Do you force her to?”

 

“Absolutely not!” Magnus squawked in outrage. “Abby _is_ Human, but when she was a child, she was adopted by a pair of Magoi, who were born in that facility we just rescued you from. They’d been experimented on, and were the only two of their cohort to survive their escape from the facility.”

 

“They hid on my parents’ farm,” Abby said hoarsely, eyes downcast with tears flowing down her cheeks as Will wrapped his arm about her shoulders. “And they became my friends and later my parents because I _needed_ them to.”

 

“Why?”

 

Abby turned into Will’s embrace, crying earnestly now and he wished for the umpteenth time that he could take away her pain.

 

“Because her parents were abusive,” he replied, still angry at what Abby had endured. “And she’d bonded with the Magoi. So, after one horrific incident—”

 

“No.”

 

The single word in that uninflected voice slashed through his consciousness like a blade.

 

“Child, look at me.” Abby lifted her tearstained face at the woman’s command. “If that pair of Gamagoi are your parents now, then it is not a simple bond, child; it is Covenant. Like the covenant my sister Ahsanglila had with their progenitors before I heard her death-screams nearly five centuries ago and I was denied access to her Cradle Lands, Ahsanglila-Gamagoi, when her Guardians closed the entry gate.”

 

“Dear Lord, _Cradle Lands …_ ” Magnus breathed. “Mira, there are other Cradle Lands outside of Akandao-Ganan?”

 

Again, the woman’s single eye reflected deep shock and they waited with palpable anticipation for her to tap out her side of the conversation.

 

“What do you know of my sister Ahkandawo and her Covenant with the protectors of her Cradle Lands, the Gaohnan? I felt her pain over two centuries ago when she was stolen from her lands and people. But again, I had got there too late, and as I was not covenant-bound to them, the Gaohnan refused me passage through her gate. And I heard her last scream over one hundred and twenty years ago when she died.”

 

“Mira, Akandao is not dead,” Magnus said gently to the visibly trembling woman, tears brimming. “She was injured one hundred and twenty-one years ago and fell into a deep coma. I found her one hundred and ten years ago in a hospital, where a kind benefactor had paid for her to be treated, but the Trust he’d set up, to take care of her after his death, was plundered by an unscrupulous hospital Trustee and so, by the time I found her, she was on a charity ward being treated like a curiosity. But when she awoke, she had no memories, Mira; if not for one of her sons deliberately following her into slavery in order to track her, and his son and grandson, we would not have known how to return her Cradle Lands, Akandao-Ganan, and to re-enter her covenant with the Ganan.”

 

“ _Oh_ …” Mira croaked, tears streaming now from her single eye. _“A’ive? Ma Dai-wo ish a’ive!”_ She threw her arm around Helen’s neck, bawling great heaving sobs.

 

Helen met Ashley’s gaze and nodded; her daughter disappeared in quiet rush of air and plasma.

 

#

 


End file.
